Oil Spill Commission Assigns Blame for BP Disaster

by The Environmentalist Staff

The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill has released a chapter from their final report due on January 11, 2011. In the chapter, which is blunt in its assessment, they assign primary blame for the disaster to mismanagement by BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and the lack of proper regulatory oversight. 

The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur.

The Root Causes: Failures in Industry and Government, Chapter Four from final report by The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

"My observation of the oil industry," stated Commission Co-Chair William K. Reilly in a press release that announced the chapter's conclusions, "indicates that there are several companies with exemplary safety and environment records. So a key question posed from the outset by this tragedy is, do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences, or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry? Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the off shore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem." Continued...

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