The three oil industry titans behind the Gulf of Mexico spill all sought to blame one another under questioning by senators this week, as troops fanned out along the Louisiana coastline to try to limit the damage caused by the environmental disaster.
With at least 15-million litres of oil now polluting the gulf, the executives of BP America, which owns the well, Transocean, which owned the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well, were trying to avoid direct blame for the April 20 incident.
As an energy and natural resources committee hearing got under way, Senate staffers joked it could be subtitled “Scenes from an execution”. But some of the worst damage may have been done by the executives themselves.
Jeff Bingaman, who heads the committee, suggested a fatal combination of errors. “We will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures: technical, human and regulatory.”
The industry executives were less coy about pointing fingers.
BP America’s chief executive Lamar McKay blamed rig operator TransÂocean, saying: “BP hired Transocean to drill that well. Transocean had the responsibility for ensuring the safety of that operation.”
He pinned the spill on the failure of a blowout preventer, a 450-tonne set of valves on the ocean floor. “We have a blowout preventer that didn’t work,” he said.
Transocean’s Steven Newman was having none of that, accusing BP of calling the shots on the rig. “Offshore oil and gas production projects begin and end with the operator, in this case BP,” he said.
It was BP that drew up the drilling plan and BP engineers were in charge when the drilling wound up and the crew prepared to cap the well.
Newman rejected suggestions of a failure of the blowout preventer, saying: “The most significant clue is that these events occurred after the well construction process had been completed.”
That pointed at Halliburton, brought in to cement the lining of the well, sealing off the reservoir. But Halliburton was equally unwilling to take the fall.
Its health, safety and environment officer, Tim Probert, warned against rushing to judgment. He told the hearing that Halliburton had carried out its work according to BP’s specifications.
Meanwhile, the Louisiana national guard deployed troops in Blackhawk helicopters to drop sandbags along the shoreline. Near Grand Isle, they hurried to plug a gap that left environmentally sensitive marshland exposed.
Much of the evidence at the Senate hearing was technical, involving the various protective devices that should — if functioning properly — prevent catastrophe.
But the companies faced tough questions about contingency plans, with senators asking why a containment dome and dispersants were not on standby. “What I see here is a company flailing around trying to deal with a worst-case scenario,” Senator Robert Menendez told BP.
The companies were also forced to admit that they were conducting no research into how to deal with deep-water spills. BP was singled out over fatal accidents in Texas and safety violations in Alaska. The company was accused of a “pattern of accidents”.
But the senators also asked pointed questions about the United States government’s regulatory regime.
In anticipation, the Obama administration said it was splitting the functions of the mineral and management service, the regulatory body in charge of licensing oil and gas operations, with one body approving offshore drilling and collecting the billions of dollars of royalties, and another monitoring safety and environmental standards.
The most immediate political casualty of the spill in the US could be the Climate Change and Energy Bill, due to be unveiled this week. Earlier versions included extensions for offshore drilling.
BP and others have acknowledged that the aftermath of the spill could change future offshore drilling operations in regions beyond the US.
BP puts on its top hat
Nearly three weeks after an oil rig explosion turned the Gulf of Mexico into an environmental disaster zone, BP was on Tuesday still casting about for a clear plan to shut off the gusher of crude that has cost the company $350-million.
BP crews were simultaneously exploring a number of different approaches to plugging the leak, known in industry slang as “top hat”, “top kill” and “junk shot”.
The search for an early fix comes as BP officials put the cost of its response to the spill at $350-million. With the failure at the weekend to lower an enormous dome over one of two leaks, BP was turning towards deploying a more modest containment box known as a “top hat”.
The initial effort was scrapped because of the formation of ice-like hydrates, a mixture of water and gas, that clogged up the four-storey-high concrete and steel box.
Oil industry experts said placing a smaller box over the smaller of the two leaks would limit seawater and reduce crystal formation.
Engineers are also looking at a “top kill” — installing a new stack of valves on top of the blowout preventer, the failure of which precipitated the disaster. Then there is the “junk shot” in which shredded tyres and golf balls are fired into the blowout preventer in the hope of clogging it. Engineers would then attempt to install a concrete seal.
BP is also studying the idea of fitting a new, larger pipe at the end of the well’s original 1 500m pipe, now crumpled on the ocean floor. All options carry the risk of exacerbating the disaster, said Philip Johnson, a petroleum engineering professor at the University of ÂAlabama.
Meanwhile authorities were stepping up efforts to keep the oil from making landfall. More than 300 000m of boom have been deployed along the coast. Submersible robots are squirting chemical dispersants directly into the well at depths of 1500m to try to thin the oil before it rises to the surface.
But there were reports that the oil has now reached the mainland. Greenpeace said it had found blobs on the beach and in the reeds at Port Eads, the southernmost tip of Louisiana. — Suzanne Goldenberg