US lawmakers to grill BP exec, others, over oil spill

WASHINGTON: Top executives from firms tied to the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, including energy giant BP's US chief, face a grilling next week by US lawmakers unnerved and even angered by the disaster.

The US Congress kicks off a spate of hearings into the catastrophe on Tuesday, when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar goes before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee to discuss "issues in offshore drilling."

Coastal state lawmakers, especially Democratic allies of President Barack Obama, have condemned the decision to lift a moratorium on offshore drilling, and want to know whether the disaster could, and should, have been averted.

That afternoon, the Senate Environment and Public Works will question BP America's chairman and president, Lamar McKay, who has promised his company will make good on its legal obligation to pay for the clean-up.

The British company has raced to contain the leak, hemorrhaging some 200,000 gallons of oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico from the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers.

The committee will also grill Steven Newman, president of Transocean, the platform operator, and Tim Probert, the top health, safety and environment officer at Halliburton, which worked on the rig shortly before the blast.

And the panel -- officially looking into the spill's "economic and environmental impacts" -- will hear from top regional and state government officials, the head of a tourism association, and scientists.

Some lawmakers, citing the possible impact of the disaster on local tourism and fishing industries, have called for lifting oil companies' liability for economic damages from a spill from 75 million to 10 billion dollars.

The same committee will hear Tuesday from a US Environment Protection Agency (EPA) official, Nancy Stoner, on EPA's role in "protecting ocean health" -- though that hearing is not explicitly tied to crisis.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee has invited McKay and Newman as well as Halliburton chief David Lesar to testify at a May 12 hearing -- though a panel aide says the final witness list is not yet cast in stone.

The House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a May 19 hearing on "Deepwater Horizon: Oil spill prevention and response measures and natural resource impacts."

On May 26, the House Natural Resources Committee will hold a hearing entitled "Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Strategy and Implications of the Deepwater Horizon Rig Explosion," with unspecified witnesses.