BP's lack of discipline tied to oil spill: Report

WASHINGTON: Oil giant BP's "insufficient consideration of risk" and "lack of operating discipline" contributed to the biggest oil spill in US history, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing a report by technical experts.

The Journal described the interim report by the National Academy of Engineering, due out Wednesday, as the most comprehensive examination of the Gulf of Mexico disaster so far.

Although the report repeatedly says that possible causes for the spill require further investigation, it is highly critical of BP, which owned an oil well that exploded on April 20 and triggered the disaster, as well as other companies, the Journal said in its online edition.

The 15-member panel also found "a lack of management discipline," a "lack of onboard expertise and of clearly defined responsibilities" and "insufficient checks and balances" for decisions where cost and safety could conflict, it added.

Yet the report acknowledged there remained many unanswered questions on important issues, and that it "may not be possible to establish the precise failure mechanism" that triggered the blowout of BP's busted wellhead, which gushed nearly five million barrels of oil into the sea.

The report also blamed regulators and the offshore oil industry as a whole, noting that industry-wide training standards are "relatively minimal" compared to other high-risk industries.

Government regulators lacked "sufficient in-house expertise and technical capabilities to evaluate industry safety practices," the reports' authors concluded, according to the Journal.

The report also pointed to several non-technical factors that likely contributed to the disaster, including insufficient training of key staff aboard the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig and federal regulators' lack of expertise.

"Available evidence suggests there were insufficient checks and balances for decisions involving both the schedule to (abandon the well) and considerations for well safety," it said.

The authors did not reach conclusions on why a key set of valves known as the blowout preventer failed to shut down the well and prevent the blast. Forensic analysis is just beginning to get underway for the device, recovered recently from the Gulf floor.

The committee's final report is due in June 2011.