BP To Release Internal Investigation Report Today

Today at noon BP is due to publish their report about the Gulf oil spill in the US. The explosion that caused the spill killed 11 workers on April 20 and caused the worst environmental disaster in the US. The area is still performing cleanup operations and the environmental impact to the area is still far away from recovery.

BP is expected to take partial blame for the incident but to name others equally at fault. The event spewed oil for almost three months into the Gulf waters and highlighted that though BP had said they were prepared for an accident the problem was beyond a quick solution. The situation has been closely examined by other companies to try and learn how to respond better and perhaps if the blame can be centered on a cause, how to prevent such an accident from happening again.

The BP report is expected to be 200 pages long. The head of the internal investigation was BP’s safety chief Mark Bay. BP’s acceptance of blame will involve the actions of workers who misread pressure readings prior to the explosion. This would have meant the workers were unaware that oil and gas were leaking into the well bore hole.

Blame will also be pointed toward Transocean whose hired staff operated the rig as well as Halliburton, the company responsible for securing the wellhead into the sea floor. Blame is also expected to be placed on the blowout preventer which should have cut off the well when the leak began.

The main focus of this report is that BP avoids gross negligence with the explosion. If BP avoids that then they maintain their insurance to help pay damages and keep fines from the US government lower. BP announced earlier that they have spent 8 billion US dollars in the aftermath of the event.

Bly’s internal investigation for BP began just days after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The site leaders, Donald Vidrine and Robert Kaluza were on board the rig when the explosion occurred. Neither has testified publicly or given interviews. Bly will have been expected to have interviewed both of them for the conclusions outlined in his reports. The report is expected to be available for public view on the BP Web site.

The US Federal government is still investigating the accident. They have probed as to whether the company took short cuts to keep costs down. The well, named Macondo by BP, had been a difficult well to drill and the project was weeks behind in its management plan.

BP shares should not suffer a loss due to the report’s release since much of the information in the report has been publicly released in other reports. Last week the blowout preventer which BP says failed to perform to prevent the explosion was brought to the surface and seized for examination by US authorities. It is unclear as to when examination of the equipment will be completed. Reports have shown that the blowout preventer had been modified in China prior to the accident.