Panel: Key Safety Device Failed in Gulf Oil Disaster

(May 12) -- An emergency device on the Gulf of Mexico well that's leaking crude oil had four major flaws in the days before a drilling platform exploded and sank last month, including a hydraulic leak and a faulty battery, members of a congressional panel said today.

The blowout preventer, intended to halt a sudden flow of a well's oil and gas, failed to block the rush of water, gas and oil on April 20 on a drilling platform off Louisiana's coast, leading to the rig's explosion and 11 deaths. The device is supposed to prevent a blowout with shears powerful enough to clamp the well pipe shut.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said a 2001 report by the preventer's owner, Transocean, showed up to 260 possible failings in the device.

"How can a device that has 260 failure modes be considered fail-safe?" Stupak asked.

According to Stupak, BP documents said that prior to the explosion, a leak was found in the hydraulic system that gives the blowout preventer emergency power. Stupak said the preventer had a faulty battery.

"The more I learn about this accident, the more concerned I become," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. "This catastrophe appears to have been caused by a calamitous series of equipment and operational failures."

Executives from the companies involved with the well each defended their firms' actions and cautioned that all the facts about the disaster are not yet known. BP owns the well that continues to spill crude; Swiss company Transocean owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform; Halliburton performed cementing work on the well; and Houston-based Cameron International Corp. manufactured the blowout preventer.

Tim Probert, a Halliburton executive, said his company performed the work as instructed by BP. And he said the blowout preventer, or BOP, should have stopped the oil flow.

"Had the BOP functioned as expected, this catastrophe would not have happened," Probert told the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Leaks in the well continue to gush about 200,000 gallons of oil daily, from a mile below the gulf's surface.

BP engineers are working on a containment system to be placed over the leaking pipe, so leaking oil can be funneled up to a vessel on the water's surface. Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer, said the "top hat" container is on the seabed and could be deployed as early as Thursday.

BP is also considering an operation known as a "junk shot," an attempt to plug the leaking pipe by shoving debris -- including golf balls and tire rubber -- inside. A junk shot could not be attempted until late next week, Suttles said.


A drilling rig has finished about 9,000 feet of a relief well intended to shut off the well's flow into the gulf. That effort could last through July.

Roughly 4 million gallons of light crude oil has flowed into the gulf since the accident three weeks ago. The nation's worst oil spill, the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989, dumped 11 million gallons of heavy crude in Alaska.

The oil spill continues to drift on the surface of the gulf.

The thin oil sheen today struck Whiskey Island, an uninhabited Louisiana barrier island south of Houma in the gulf, state officials said. The sheen has also struck the uninhabited Chandeleur Islands, southeast of New Orleans.

Heavier tar balls were reported today at South Pass, in lower Plaquemines Parish, state wildlife officials said in a news release. Tar balls -- sticky, dark-colored chunks of oil -- have also washed ashore at Alabama's Dauphin Island.

"We will continue to clean these [tar balls] up readily," Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said at a news conference in Robert, La.

Landry said six dolphins and 87 sea turtles have washed up dead, although she said it has not been confirmed that they died because of oil. Necropsies are under way to determine the causes of the deaths, she said.

Stupak said the House panel's investigation is ongoing.

"We're in the early stages," he said. "There will me more questions and answers, I'm sure."