Investigation into BP spill questions accountability in lead up to explosion

TRANSCRIPT:

An investigation into the causes of the BP oil spill continued today in Houston. Members of the Coast Guard, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, and attorneys from all sides questioned BP executives about safety culture and accountability - at times investigators grew frustrated with a web of authority that made it unclear who was really in charge in the lead-up to the disaster. Tanya Snyder reports.

David Sims is a drilling operations manager at BP. He was one of the VIPs visiting the Macondo rig on April 20^th, when the rig exploded.

Sims testified that he didn’t hear gas detector alarms go off, or notice other BP employees monitoring the detectors. He said his first clue something was wrong was a high-frequency vibration. He was asked if the scene was chaotic – if people were shouting.

DAVID SIMS: Chaos is probably too strong a word, and not shouting, but a lot of concern, a lot of worried people.

TANYA SNYDER: Did you hear people giving direction to other people during that time?

SIMS: The Captain was, in my opinion, was doing the directing. What directing was going on was being done by the captain.

That question of WHO was giving orders dominated much of the questioning on the fourth day of the fourth round of hearings by the joint panel. By Thursday morning, lead investigator Coast Guard Captain Hung Nguyen said countless executives had already come before the panel, saying it wasn’t their fault. Here, he questioned Kent Wells, a senior vice president at BP.

HUNG NGUYEN: Their answer was I don’t know, I’m not responsible for this or that. Now, for the Gulf of Mexico, who has the total awareness and accountability for the safe operation of BP deepwater operation?

KENT WELLS: As I tried to say earlier, we try not to make it one person, that’s not a good outcome to have just one person, we try to have everybody focused on safe operations.

That answer didn’t satisfy Nguyen.

NGUYEN: If everybody in charge, nobody in charge is that correct?

WELLS: I disagree, when it comes to safety. We want everybody feeling like they can stop the job.

When asked about causes of the explosion, Wells said he had no idea–his philosophy was to focus only on the response, and ask no questions until later.

Investigators also asked about lessons learned from previous BP disasters and near-disasters, including a refinery explosion in Texas City that killed 15 people in 2005. And they cited correspondence from the Minerals Management Service – a government agency which has taken a lot of heat for lax oversight of BP. Here investigator Jason Mathews asks Kent Wells to read aloud from the letter MMS sent BP after those other incidents.

WELLS: The circumstances surrounding these incidents have questions about the ability of BP to safely conduct drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico.

JASON MATHEWS: And then I’d like you to go to the second page, and the last sentence of the third paragraph.

WELLS: This appears to indicate that BP does not regard its required oversight of contractor operations to the level of accountability MMS desires.

After these hearings, the investigators will make conclusions and recommendations and issue a final report.

Tanya Snyder, FSRN