Gulf spill panel: No evidence BP, firms cut corners to save money

The chief investigator of the bipartisan White House commission looking into the causes of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill said there is no evidence to suggest that BP, Transocean or Halliburton cut corners on safety to save money.

“To date we have not found a single instance where human beings made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety,” Fred Bartlit, chief counsel of the commission, said during a presentation at the opening of a two-day hearing.

{mosads}The panel — known as the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling — has not found an instance where “a man had a choice between safety and dollar and put his money on dollars,” he said. “We haven’t seen it.”

Bartlit began a lengthy step-by-step digital presentation on the realities of deepwater drilling and the events leading up to the deadly April 20 blowout of the BP Macondo well that killed 11 rig workers and gushed 185 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It is the only public presentation of his team’s tentative findings into the cause of the accident, which has so far concentrated mainly on the well cementing job by Halliburton.

Bartlit has tentatively found that Halliburton — BP’s contractor for that work — and BP knew weeks ahead of the fatal explosion of the well that cement being used to seal it was faulty but “neither acted upon it,” according to an Oct. 28 letter he sent commission members.

Halliburton has pushed back against many of the conclusions in that letter. Officials from the company, along with BP and rig-owner Transocean, will appear before the commission later Monday.

The witnesses are not testifying under oath at this fourth and final meeting of the commission before it is expected to deliver its findings Jan. 11. The House approved giving the commission subpoena authority, but the Senate did not act.

“To those senators that blocked this commission from receiving subpoena power, let me just say, I hope that are you pleasantly surprised … and not disappointed,” William Reilly, commission co-chair and former EPA administrator under the George H.W. Bush administration, said at the start of Monday’s meeting.

Bartlit and the other investigators have not said what may have happened to the well’s blowout preventer — the last defense against a well rupturing.

An independent Norwegian foundation was contracted by a federal Joint Investigation Team from the Interior and Homeland Security departments to undertake a forensic examination of the failed blowout preventer.

“It would be very premature for us to speculate when in some reasonable period of time we will know what happened,” Bartlit said.

Spill commission co-chair Bob Graham promised at the start of Monday’s meeting that Bartlit and other leading investigators would provide “the clearest presentation the American people have received to date” on the events leading up to the rig explosion.

“We are not looking for scapegoats,” Graham said. “But we do believe we have an obligation to uncover all relevant facts.”