Commission slams US government over oil spill oversight

The US government failed to adapt its policy for overseeing offshore oil drilling as exploration moved into deeper waters, according to a commission set up to investigate the causes of the BP oil spill.

The National Commission on the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling yesterday criticised the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service for failing to adapt to the changing safety risks faced by the industry, while also directly admonishing the president for allowing the lapse to occur.

"It is clear that the move to deep water represents an enormous change in US energy exploration," said Bob Graham, who co-chairs the commission. " Unfortunately, our government and industry did not undergo a similar transformation in its regulatory and safety focus."

The percentage of ultra-deep wells drilling below 5,000 feet has risen from one per cent to 32 per cent in the past five years, he said, adding that the government had to take a large share of the blame for the BP oil spill.

"We should be clear – this disaster represents an enormous, and shared, failure of public policy," he said.

Elizabeth Birnbaum, former director of MMS, who resigned her post a month into the spill, admitted that the watchdog had struggled to keep pace with developments in the industry.

"MMS staff had upgraded technical standards on a regular basis over time, but no comprehensive internal or external review of these standards had been conducted in many years," she said. "Some regulatory improvements had been recommend by staff during the years of the Bush administration, but never made it though the process to be finalised as regulations."

These proposed changes included new rules that would have required a secondary trigger mechanism for blowout preventers.

"MMS failed to conduct a comprehensive review of the rules as drilling moved into deep water wells," Birnbaum continued.

The MMS has suffered extensive criticism during the past couple of years, with accusations of conflicts of interest in its relationship with oil and gas companies.

Birnbaum had backed a plan from the Obama administration, criticised by the commission, that would have further expanded offshore drilling. The plan would have allowed some drilling off the Atlantic coast, said officials, adding that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and White House Council on Environmental Quality were not consulted before the proposals were approved by the administration.

The panel also discussed potential measures to make offshore drilling companies more accountable, should they share responsibility for a well.

In other news, a worker for rig owner Transocean testified that the blowout preventer which failed during the BP spill had not been certified according to federal regulations. The device repeatedly required maintenance work, said the worker, speaking before a joint investigation by the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.