DISASTER IN THE GULF
BP report sets inquiry agenda - for now
Company gets out in front on the debate over causes of rig blowout
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 8, 2010, 10:32PM
In releasing the first detailed report on the causes of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP laid down a battleground for years of legal and political skirmishes, and may have provided itself some cover against the most severe civil and criminal penalties.
In the highly anticipated report released Wednesday, the British oil giant acknowledged limited responsibility for the myriad missteps that led to the April 20 blowout at its Macondo well, shifting most of the blame to contractors who analysts say will now be forced to respond on BP's terms.
The report outlines in 234 pages the results of a four-month investigation that identified and analyzed eight key factors in the disaster and includes recommendations for preventing future accidents.
"BP has set the battleground, now Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron are going to have to respond initially on the turf that BP has selected," said Kent Moors, a professor at the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University and president of ASIDA, an international oil and gas consulting firm.
Three more companies
Transocean owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon under contract with BP. Halliburton performed well cementing that BP identifies as a trigger to the chain of events that destroyed the rig, killed 11 men and set off a 4.9-million-barrel oil spill in the Gulf. Cameron built the blowout preventer that failed as the last line of defense against disaster.
By getting out in front of the debate, Moors said, BP framed the discussion going forward, at least until others reply with findings from their own investigations.
Role of others
Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the influential House Committee on Energy and Commerce, acknowledged as much in saying the report "raises many questions" about the role of others in the accident.
But he also accused BP of glossing over its own role.
Yet BP also may benefit from demonstrating to the federal government that the company is acting in good faith by investigating the accident and helping regulators and industry find ways to prevent recurrences, said Tracy Hester, assistant professor and the director of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resource Center at the University of Houston Law Center.
"That is important in dealing with government agencies, because responding in good faith could play an important role in assessing civil penalties and in the government's decision to ultimately charge anyone," Hester said. A similar internal investigation into BP's 2005 Texas City refinery explosion was important in shaping enforcement decisions after that event as well, he said.
While the findings brought few surprises to analysts, academics and attorneys closely following the case, BP was nonetheless clobbered by critics for failing to take more responsibility.
Nancy Leveson, a specialists in systems safety at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has investigated hundreds of major accidents, including ones on spacecraft and oil refineries, said expecting anything else from BP would have been naive. She likened the findings to an incident report written by someone in a car crash who was told he, not his insurance company, would be on the hook for damages.
'Astounding liability'
"BP faces astounding liability. Everyone in the world is suing them, including other oil companies. It's just impossible for a company to investigate itself under these circumstances," Leveson said.
The report doesn't address accusations leveled against the company and doesn't discuss any role BP management may have played in the decision-making. Rather than a defense, the report should be seen an explanation of the mechanical and physical failures that caused the accident, Leveson said.
"The lawsuits are going to be about the things that are left out of this report, who did what," Leveson said.
Halliburton said BP's findings had a number of "substantial omissions and inaccuracies." And a spokesman for Transocean called the report "self-serving" and an attempt "to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP's fatally flawed well design."
During a three-hour technical briefing Wednesday in Washington, BP safety and operations chief Mark Bly, who headed the investigation, denied the report was written to diffuse blame. "We wanted to understand what happened and why," he said.
Fall on their own sword?
But Steve Gordon, a veteran maritime lawyer in Houston who represents the family of rig worker Karl Kleppinger Jr., who died on the Deepwater Horizon, and eight survivors, said BP missed an opportunity to speed litigation for those it said it would make whole.
"Is it naive to think BP would have accepted some blame when you've been told for more than 140 days, 'Do not worry, America, we will get to the bottom of what happened and admit fault where we were at fault and make recompense?' " Gordon said. "I don't expect them to fall on their own sword, but truly analyze how BP messed up."
No special weight
A joint Coast Guard- Interior Department board investigating the accident will take into consideration the Bly Report as it looks for root causes but won't give it special weight, Coast Guard Lt. Sue Kerver said.
"They would use that as they would any other piece of evidence and see if there's any information they needed to glean or any other folks they need to bring in and talk to as a result of that," she said.
Eban Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who chairs a congressional panel investigating the oil spill, said the congressman is reviewing the report and checking it against information the committee has already received from BP and elsewhere.
"If we find cause to ask additional questions relevant to the investigation, we will do so," he said.
Brett Clanton and Tom Fowler contributed from Houston and Jennifer A. Dlouhy from Washington.
