"[3] On 8 December, Joe Keith, a senior Halliburton manager, said to the U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department panel in Houston that he left his post aboard Transocean’s rig to smoke a cigarette on the night of the April disaster in the Gulf.
While he was away from his monitors, charts entered into evidence showed that pressure data indicated the well was filling up with explosive natural gas and crude.
In essence, that report states that the main cause was the defective cement job, and Halliburton, BP and Transocean were, in different ways, responsible for the accident.
This investigation also revealed that the oversight and regulation of Deepwater Horizon by its flag state, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), was ineffective in preventing this casualty.
On 11 May the Obama administration requested the National Academy of Engineering conduct an independent technical investigation to determine the root causes of the disaster so that corrective steps could be taken to address the mechanical failures underlying the accident.
[11] On 16 November, the independent 15-member committee convened by the National Academy of Engineering released a report stating BP and others, including federal regulators, ignored "near misses".
University of Michigan engineering practice professor and committee chairman Donald Winter said that sealing the well continued "despite several indications of potential hazard".
As Donald Winter told The New York Times, "A large number of decisions were made that were highly questionable and potentially contributed to the blowout of the Macondo well...
"[13] An unused Oil Spill Commission slide[14] obtained by Greenwire, outlines 11 decisions that BP and its contractors ( Halliburton Co., Transocean Ltd. and MI Swaco) made before the disaster that may have increased risk on the rig.
[15] On 22 May President Obama announced that he had issued Executive Order 13543 establishing the bipartisan National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, with former Florida Governor and Senator Bob Graham and former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator William K. Reilly serving as co-chairs.
"[16][17] On 8 November, the inquiry by the Oil Spill Commission revealed its findings that BP had not sacrificed safety in attempts to make money, but that some decisions had increased risks on the rig.
[22] The panel found that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean had attempted to work more cheaply and thus helped to trigger the explosion and ensuing leakage.
[23] The report states: "Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blowout clearly saved those companies significant time (and money).
Government oversight (see Chapter 9) must be accompanied by the oil and gas industry's internal reinvention: sweeping reforms that accomplish no less than a fundamental transformation of its safety culture.
Only through such a demonstrated transformation will industry—in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster—truly earn the privilege of access to the nation's energy resources located on federal properties.On 1 June, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he opened an investigation of the oil spill.
The shear rams were not designed to function on the joints where the drill pipes were screwed together or on tools that were passed through the blowout preventer during well construction.
[33] Employee Tyrone Benton told the BBC on 21 June that a leak was spotted on a crucial piece of equipment in the oil rig's blowout preventer weeks before the accident, and that Transocean and BP were emailed about it.
[34] According to the testimony of Doug Brown, the chief mechanic on the Deepwater Horizon, on 26 May at the joint U.S. Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service hearing, a BP representative overruled Transocean employees and insisted on displacing protective drilling mud with seawater just hours before the explosion.
[40] In a statement made in June the Committee noted that in a number of cases leading up to the explosion, BP appeared to have chosen riskier procedures to save time or money, sometimes against the advice of its staff or contractors.
[41] In an 18 June statement, Jim Hackett, the CEO of Anadarko Petroleum Corporation, said research "indicates BP operated unsafely and failed to monitor and react to several critical warning signs during the drilling.
[46] On 25 August, Harry Thierens, BP's vice president for drilling and completions, told the hearing that he found that the blowout preventer was connected to a test pipe, rather than the one conveying oil to the surface.
The investigation also questioned why an engineer with BP, the team leader overseeing the project, ignored warnings about weaknesses in cement outside the well which could have prevented the gas from escaping.
2) Oil then entered the production casing (an inner pipe) although two barriers (one made of cement called a "shoe track"[49]) were supposed to prevent this.
This loophole allows companies to potentially carry out superficial analyses, which may not accurately assess the operational status of critical safety equipment, like the BOP.
Several other probes, such as those led by the U.S. Coast Guard and a commission designated by President Barack Obama, ascertained that the catastrophe resulted from various causes and involved multiple entities.