Yet Another Federal Agency Joins Swarm of Spill Probes

(June 25) -- When a little-known federal agency with just 14 investigators joined the growing list of government probes into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, it renewed cries from the Gulf of Mexico -- and beyond -- that no one seems to be in charge.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's sleuthing brings the count of federal investigations to six -- and that's not counting the probes under way by a half-dozen congressional committees. Or the investigation being conducted by Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley, engineering professor who has assembled a 66-member team to assist the various investigative efforts.

"It's hard to see who's in charge. The answer is: nobody," said Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the 9/11 Commission's investigation into the 2001 terrorist attacks. "The president can't control Congress. He can't control BP. He can't control the states, which are doing their own investigations. All he can control is what the executive branch is doing."

The inquiry by the chemical safety board, an independent agency, follows those launched by the Justice Department; the Interior Department; the Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service, working jointly; and President Barack Obama's seven-member special commission.

"I would have preferred one central investigation by the federal government, or even one by the executive branch," said Slade Gorton, a two-term Republican senator from Washington state and a member of the 9/11 Commission.

Gorton also served on a special panel headed by former Secretary of State James Baker that investigated the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery that killed 15 workers. The report, published in 2007, harshly criticized BP for lax safety.

"We had 11 members, seven of whom were industrial safety experts," said Gorton, who singles out Obama's presidential commission as lacking in technical expertise. "We had people with no agenda to start with."

Peter Goelz, former managing director of the National Transportation Safety Board, thinks the gulf oil spill reinforces the need for an independent investigative agency patterned on the NTSB. This super-agency would investigate not only oil spills, but also other disasters such as the West Virginia coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners last month.

"We've got so many investigations of the spill going on, the public quite rightly can ask, what agendas are at play behind each one of these?" Goelz said. "In the NTSB, we have a model that not only works from a technical standpoint, but one that the various constituencies believe in."

Despite the chaos inherent in multiple investigations, however, Hamilton said the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

"You have a better chance of getting to the bottom of things," he said. "You have a better chance of ending up with the whole picture than if you have a single agency doing the whole investigation."

A scorecard to the probes under way so far:

Joint Coast Guard/Minerals Management Service

A public hearing resumes July 19 before a six-member panel of Coast Guard and MMS officials assembled in a New Orleans airport hotel meeting room. Last month, 37 witnesses were called to describe the April 20 explosion and fire on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. In the coming session, the panel will look into the decision-making aboard the rig.

So far, the hearing has produced the clearest picture so far of what happened on the Deepwater Horizon. But the proceedings are not without complications: Robert Kaluza, one of BP's top officials on the rig, declined to testify, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

In addition, the panel's public questioning of witnesses has come in for criticism from the Interior Department's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall. Because the MMS lacked clear guidelines for conducting accident investigations (they are summed up in a scant five paragraphs of regulations), the Coast Guard's more substantial procedures are guiding the probe. The Coast Guard rules "are comprehensive," Kendall told a House committee, "but in my view, completely backwards, gathering evidence via public hearing, rather than developing evidence to culminate in a public forum."

The Justice Department

Always wary of competing investigations, where witnesses may give contradictory statements, prosecutors and defense attorneys prefer to work in a more controlled setting. That's not going to happen in this case.

Another potential headache for prosecutors is the MMS's partnership with the Coast Guard in investigating the cause of the disaster -- as well as the MMS's role leading up to the disaster. According to testimony at the joint hearing in Louisiana, the minerals agency approved BP's plan for the well that blew out and failed to ask to see relevant documents that BP was required to provide to the government.

The civil investigation is proceeding under the direction of Bruce Gelber, who heads the environmental enforcement section. Determining how much oil has been spilled is key: Under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, fines could range from $1,000 per barrel of oil spill up to $4,300 per barrel if a federal judge finds that the spill occurred because of gross negligence.

The Presidential Commission

The Columbia Accident Investigation Board took just seven months to investigate the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia over Texas. But the presidential commission examining the oil spill will not meet until mid-July and may not issue a report until next year.

Chaired by former Florida Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat, and William Reilly, a Republican, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency under the elder President George Bush, the panel is already drawing fire for being more political than neutral. One panel member, Frances Beinecke, president of the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has blogged about "America's addiction to oil" and urged a ban on offshore drilling. Graham, who also served as Florida's governor, worked for years to prevent drilling off Florida's coast.

The Interior Department

Immediately after the spill, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a panel of seven scientists to report on drilling safety within 30 days. After the finished 38-page report ended up at the center of the court fight over Obama's six-month drilling moratorium, panel members said Salazar had misinterpreted their report and that they did not argue for a blanket moratorium.

Meanwhile, on May 11, Salazar asked the National Academy of Engineering to help determine the cause of the explosion, fire and spill by providing "a fresh set of eyes." Molly Galvin, an NAE spokeswoman, said the engineers will examine the technology and performance of the Deepwater Horizon's blowout preventer and make recommendations aimed at avoiding future spills. That panel will send an interim report to Salazar and the Coast Guard and the presidential commission in October, and deliver a final report next June.

The Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

The tiny agency, with 14 staff investigators, became involved after House Energy Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., asked it to investigate the spill. The board has solid background on BP, having spent nearly two years probing the 2005 explosion at BP's Texas City refinery. In the end it cited cost-cutting, a lax safety culture and production pressure from BP executives as factors in causing the accident. The board also found "striking similarities" between the refinery explosion and a 2006 BP pipeline break at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, that leaked 4,800 barrels.

But the board also lacks cash. Chairman John Bresland warned in a letter to Waxman that the agency had spent $2.5 million investigating Texas City. The Deepwater Horizon investigation presents "an even higher level of cost and complexity," Bresland said.