Oil giant BP PLC laid much of the blame for the rig explosion and the massive Gulf of Mexico spill on itself, other companies’ workers and a complex series of failures in an internal report released Wednesday before a key piece of evidence has been fully analyzed, The Associated Press reports.
In its 193-page report posted on its website, the British company described the incident as an accident that arose from a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces.
BP spread the blame around, and even was critical of its own workers’ conduct, but it defended some parts of the well’s design and it was careful in its assessments. It already faces hundreds of lawsuits and billions of dollars of liabilities. In public hearings, it had already tried to shift some of the blame to rig owner Transocean Ltd. and cement contractor Halliburton. BP was leasing the rig from Transocean and owned the well that blew out.
While BP didn’t completely absolve its engineers, the company shot down some of the things they’ve been criticized for by members of Congress and others.
“Well control actions taken prior to the explosion suggest the rig crew was not sufficiently prepared to manage an escalating well control situation,” the report said.
A Transocean lawyer said the company had no immediate comment on the report.
Shares in BP extended gains after the release of the report. The stock was up 2 percent at 414.95 pence ($6.41) shortly after the report was made public Wednesday.
The report was generated by a BP team led by Mark Bly, BP’s head of safety and operations.
BP’s report is far from the final word on possible causes of the explosion, as several divisions of the U.S. government, including the Justice Department, Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, are also investigating.
Also, a key piece of the puzzle — the blowout preventer that failed to stop the oil from leaking from the well off the Louisiana coast — was raised from the water Saturday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had not reached a NASA facility in New Orleans where government investigators planned to analyze it. Undersea robots were able to look at the device for months, but the device had not been physically examined on shore by the time the report was released.
The April 20 rig explosion killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s undersea well.
Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.
But they don’t know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don’t know why the blowout preventer didn’t seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to.
The details of BP’s internal report were closely guarded — and only a short list of people saw it ahead of its release.
