Gulf oil spill: BP safety record blasted by House panel

The safety records of oil giant BP and the government agency charged with overseeing offshore drilling drew sharp criticism at a Wednesday morning House hearing on the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

"Many of the elements of this tragedy are familiar to the committee," said Rep. James L. Oberstar (D-Minn.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. With BP America President Lamar McKay sitting in front of the panel, Oberstar assailed BP's "sorry record" on safety, adding that the well blowout 48 miles off the Louisiana coast was the latest in a spate of BP safety lapses.

Those include a deadly refinery blast in Texas and "the worst spill in the history of oil development on Alaska's north slope," incidents that have "cast doubt on whether the company has the commitment to the practice and the culture of safety necessary to protect the public," Oberstar said.

Almost a month has passed since the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 people, Oberstar noted. "BP has harnessed impressive scientific and technological experience to drill at great depths in the sea, and you have to wonder why they hadn't harnessed similar science and technology to anticipate failure, to install redundancy to prevent failure, and practices to clean up after an oil spill."

A ruptured riser pipe once connecting the well to the drill rig is gushing an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil per day, although some scientists believe the amount to be orders of magnitude higher. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said at a hearing Tuesday that a siphon pipe BP has inserted into the riser is drawing off as much as 40% of the oil.

Oberstar also took to task the Minerals Management Service, an agency under Salazar's authority, citing a "disturbing lack of dedication to safety, excessive reliance on the industry to police itself."

"Minerals Management Service has fallen way short of the commitment needed for effective oversight of offshore drilling," he said. The service, he said, failed to regulate blowout preventers, "a critical part of the BP plan to contain or to prevent a spill."  

Engineers worked for weeks to try to get that massive apparatus above the well head to function as it should: to sever and seal the well pipe. They have been unsuccessful, and soon may resort to plugging up the blowout preventer or pumping drilling mud into it to push back against the force of the gushing petroleum.

Rep. John L. Mica of Florida, the panel’s top Republican, said that the lax oversight lies at the feet of the Obama administration. "I call this the Obama oil spill timeline," Mica said.

Holding up a newspaper headline, "Salazar Says Regulatory Oversight of Industry is Lax," Mica said, "I don't know what planet he's on, but we've had these warnings for some time."

Oberstar called it "inflammatory to call it the Obama oil spill – and wrong," noting that approvals were given by career bureaucrats.

The Obama administration has temporarily halted any new applications to drill in the Gulf.

About 20,000 people and 900 vessels are responding to the spill, and 1.9 million feet of booms, about 360 miles, have been deployed to try to protect the coastline, McKay told the committee.  Plans call for injecting mud and cement into the leaking pipe to plug it. The technique has been used before but not at this depth, McKay said. 

While the congressional hearings have involved talk about arcane technical matters, ocean currents and political posturing, Rep. Nick Rahall II (D-W.Va.) took time to read the names of the 11 workers killed in the rig explosion.

The hearings come as Congress considers legislation, including setting new environmental and safety rules for offshore drilling and increasing the industry’s liability for spills.

-- Richard Simon in Washington

Photo: Streaks of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Matt]

BP truly has a horrendous safety record. God, even Exon Mobill is a hundred times safer than BP! It is also the government's fault that failed to oversee the problems at BP, but seriously, I think BP shouldn't be allowed to operate these oil fields where there is a risk - otherwise we can only hope that such disasters aren't repeated. Let them get their act right first. http://bit.ly/9J6cEs

[save the deserts]

And yet, Salazar and Obama just gave BP's Industrial Solar division (Bright Source) a $1.4 Billion loan guarantee to permanently destroy an (admitted ) 7,000 acres of healthy, functioning desert ecosystem at Ivanpah, plus the huge domino effects of the dust smothering the CO2-absorbing soil crusts for miles around, the dead endangered tortoise, and the water depletion. Oh, and the cumulative impacts of 500 of these things in a concentrated area plus the construction, manufacturing and transmission emissions which will result in a NET INCREASE IN GHG emissions (gee, that's green).

Unmitigatable, permanent and total ecosystem destruction WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT - this damage will all be done just by building the danged thing. Lord only knows what will happen when their gas lines blow up (yeah, it's called solar but it burns gas - weird) or their diesel trucks (run all the time to rinse mirrors) explode or whatever stupid negligent accidents are on the way because BIG ENERGY CANNOT BE TRUSTED.

So why are we scolding BP on the one hand, but gushing money at them on the other? Money that could be loaned to US to install solar panels on our rooftops, where the power is needed and where it won't kill the planet...

[Louie]

No mention of BP's Naptha plant that exploded a few months ago in Anacortes, WA that killed several workers. This same plant had a number of prior safety violations. I guess it was Naptha and not oil, but it still seems relevant considering it was BP.

[freddy de freitas]

Boycott BP. www.boycottbp.com

[hi]

imagive that oil all lit on fire. that would be cool/

[Hgus]

The Obama Oil Spill??? Really.

These guys are incredible.

The resession starts 6 months before Obama takes office- "the Obama Recession".
Two wars started 7 years before Obama- "Obama's war(s)"
Massive debt and deficits well before Obama takes office -caused by tax cuts and out of control spending "Obama's deficits"
A financial crisis led by lack of reg. oversite. "Obama's financial crisis".
A nomination for SCOTUS who was not previously a judge "Obama's Herriot Myers"
A private industry oil disaster- "Obama's Katrina"

All during a cascade of: "Obama is destroying America", "where is the birth certificate", "Death Panels", "He's a racist" etc.

What is wrong with these people!!! If Repbulicans had done such a great job in their stewardship of this country for the previous 8 years, then why is our country so fragile that one man could destroy it in less than 18 months?

Obama has been pretty busy in the past 18 months. He has tried to:

Prevent a depression
Save the banks
Save the manufacturing base of our country
Stop gouging by our Health Insurance companies
Reduce our dependancy on oil by encourging green alternatives and getting rid of "clunckers" and adding "calking".
Nominated 2 SCOTUS candidates
Dealt with three attempted terrorist attacks
And three unregulated industry disasters (Finacial services, Mortgage and now Oil).

And he did all of this while the republicans filibustered and did their best to bring government to a standstill. The repubs filibustered more times last year than in history, all the while critizing him for doing too much. And they still have the sack to say that "He should have stopped this oil spill from happening and cleaned up the oil once it did."

Even the most remotely intelligent Teabagger has to recognize that this has gotten a little sad and pathetic.

[Patrick]

"I call this the Obama oil spill timeline," Mica said.

George Bush I established oil drilling in the Gulf of mexico. i would call it the Bush Oil Spill!, More accurate timeline for the rests of trhe country instead of blaming the Obama administration for decisons made by the GOP over the last twenty years minus the clinton Eight years.

Tewo Bush's and we have masive losses of banks, energy, homes, jobs, etc. Blame the culprit the Bush's I/II