Gulf spill panel wants Congress to approve subpoena power

Members of the bipartisan commission probing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill will ask Congress during the lame-duck session to grant them subpoena power.

“There will be an effort made in the lame-duck session … to secure subpoena power,” said former Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

If Congress grants the request, the commission would give its chief counsel, Fred Bartlit, “whatever time he requires” to finish his investigation into the root causes of the Gulf spill, Graham said at a press briefing during Monday’s fourth and final public meeting of the commission. The commission is scheduled to deliver its findings Jan. 11.

“If we got subpoena power, we’re going to ask for more time to write the report,” Bartlit said. 

“It’s never too late,” Bartlit said. “My view is this is very important. “

Bartlit would like to further investigate areas in which the three companies involved in the spill — BP, Transocean and Halliburton — disagree with his team’s preliminary findings.  

The House has twice passed legislation granting the subpoena power, but the Senate has not acted.

Some Senate Republicans have opposed giving the panel subpoena power due to concern that its membership — appointed solely by President Obama — would not be fair in its assessment. They have particularly pointed to oil-and-gas drilling critics on the panel. There was a bipartisan effort to set up an alternative commission that Congress would mostly appoint, but that has yet to be approved. 

Graham said the fact that officials from the three companies — who are being grilled by Bartlit at Monday’s meeting — have been as “open and candid” as they have been without being forced to testify under oath through a subpoena shows the integrity of Bartlit and the “fair-mindedness” of the commission. 

“I am hopeful that will be sufficient to convince the Congress that we’re doing a good job on their behalf [and] that we should have subpoena power to allow us to go to another level,” Graham said.

Commission co-chair Bill Reilly — former EPA administrator under President George H.W. Bush — said the commission is “pleased that we’ve uncovered what we have without subpoena power.”

But he and other leaders on the commission acknowledge there are areas of inquiry that the subpoena power could help clear up.

BP and Transocean officials, for example, blame each other for failing to ensure the adequacy of critical pressure testing the night BP’s Macondo well exploded April 20.

“That’s the classic area where you need to sit people down and cross examine,” Bartlit said. “People are not intentionally not telling the truth, it’s just the way the world works. You get a different response when you can take a day, we can ask question by question and sort it out.”

BP officials say Halliburton and Transocean officials agreed with them that the pressure testing the night of the well explosion showed no danger. Transocean officials have emphasized it was up to BP to determine that, not Transocean officials.