BP Oil Spill Report Cites Multiple Causes

The 8 September saw BP release its hotly-anticipated report on the Gulf of Mexico oil leak caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig earlier this year.

The report extended to 193 pages and it described how the leak could be traced back to “a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties", as opposed to a single root cause.

The outpouring of millions of barrels of oil from beneath the seabed onto the surface has caused unprecedented modern-day US ecological damage and BP accepted partial responsibility, but not all of it. The decisions of multiple difference sources, it explained, led to the disaster, specifically “a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgements, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces.”

BP Oil Spill Report

BP was not the owner of Deepwater Horizon, but was using it through a lease agreement established with Transocean, while it used Halliburton for its concrete needs.

The BP oil spill report detailed how staff working at both Transocean and BP failed to fully interpret a safety trial which should have exposed an explosion risk. “Over a 40-minute period, the Transocean rig crew failed to recognise and act on the influx of hydrocarbons into the well”, it said.

“To put it simply, there was a bad cement job and a failure of the shoe track barrier at the bottom of the well, which let hydrocarbons from the reservoir into the production casing”, soon-to-depart BP chief executive, Tony Hayward, explained.

BP Oil Spill: Cause

“The negative pressure test was accepted when it should not have been, there were failures in well control procedures and in the blow-out preventer; and the rig’s fire and gas system did not prevent ignition”, he said, adding that it didn’t seem likely that the way the well had been designed was an BP oil spill cause-factor.

The BP oil leak report also featured a set of 25 recommendations aimed at stopping a similar incident from ever taking place again. The recommendations put forward covered a number of areas including ensuring workers are component, testing cement and monitoring well integrity.

A cap was placed on the BP oil well in mid-July and efforts to place a permanent seal over the exit site are scheduled to take place in coming weeks.

Meanwhile, further BP oil spill reports are expected –several in the US.

See also:

US Oil Spill Effects Disastrous for Marine Life

BP Attempts US Oil Spill Clean-Up