BP "short cuts" responsible for avoidable oil spill

By Channel 4

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could have been avoided and was partly caused by short cuts and cost-cutting measures by BP and other companies, a scathing inquiry finds. At the same time, the American Petroleum Institute has launched a big campaign to go into the Florida Keys, the Arctic, both are very sensitive environmental areas.

A US Presidential Commission blamed "systemic" industry failures for last April's rig explosion which killed 11 people and caused one of the worst oil spills in history - also warning that without major reform, they would likely recur.

BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the Macondo well, made individual decisions that increased risks of a blow-out, but saved significant time or money, the report said.

"Most of the mistakes and oversights at Macondo can be traced back to a single overarching failure - a failure of management," it said. "Better management by BP, Halliburton and Transocean would almost have certainly prevented the blow-out."

 "Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blow-out clearly saved those companies significant time.

"BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that key decisions in the months leading up to the blow-out were safe or sound from an engineering perspective."

"The blow-out was not the product of a series of abberational decisions made by a rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. "Rather, the root causes are systemic, and absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur."

Transocean, which owned the rig being leased by BP to perform the drilling, and Halliburton, the cement contractor on the well, both laid the blame on BP.

Full article, here.