The US Government’s National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling has released its report into the Deepwater Horizon incident of last April, said to be the largest oil spill in US history.
In the report, the Commission said that the loss of life of the Macondo well could have been prevented with the immediate causes of the blowout that sparked the disaster being traced to a series of “identifiable” mistakes made by BP, Halliburton and the rig owner Transocean “reveal such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry”.
The Commission said that deepwater energy exploration and production, particularly at the frontiers of experience, involve risks for which neither industry nor government has been adequately prepared, but for which they can and must be prepared in the future.
It called for reforms – beyond those already in place shortly after the Deepwater Horizon disaster – to regulatory oversight of safety and environmental protection. It called for similar reforms to leasing, energy exploration, and production and also the fundamental overhaul of those in charge of regulatory oversight and their internal decision-making process to ensure political autonomy technical expertise, and their full consideration of environmental protection concerns.
It warns that the technology, laws and regulations, and practices for containing, responding to, and cleaning up spills lag behind the real risks associated with deepwater drilling into large, high-pressure reservoirs of oil and gas located far offshore and thousands of feet below the ocean’s surface.
“Government must close the existing gap and industry must support rather than resist that effort,” the Commission said.
However, the report concedes that regulatory oversight alone will not be sufficient to ensure adequate safety adding that the oil and gas industry will need to take its own, unilateral steps to dramatically increase safety throughout the industry, including self-policing mechanisms that supplement governmental enforcement.
