OIL SPILL - BP's Troubled Safety Record

"Panel Presses BP on Its Safety Record" by ROBBIE BROWN, New York Times 8/26/2010

Federal investigators pressed senior BP officials on Thursday about whether the company had a troubled record of safety problems even before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.

Taking a step back for perspective, a government panel exploring the rig explosion raised pointed questions about what lessons had been learned from several previous emergencies in 2002 and 2005. Time after time, BP appeared to have gambled with safety, said a chairman of the panel, Capt. Hung Nguyen of the Coast Guard.

“One dot is a point, two dots is a line, and three dots is a trend,” Captain Nguyen said. “There’s a trend there about the safety culture of BP. These things keep happening.”

The observation emerged as the panel of Coast Guard and Interior Department representatives received testimony from three senior BP officials. Since the hearings began in May, the focus has gradually shifted from low-level rig workers to shore-based managers for the companies involved in drilling the well.

The previous situations cited by the board included two little-known near-blowouts on oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico in 2002, the near-capsizing of a rig in 2005 and a major explosion at a Texas refinery in 2005. In response to each, BP conducted investigations and took necessary action, including spending $1.4 billion after the explosion in Texas, said Kent Wells, the company’s senior vice president for exploration and production.

But the panel called on Mr. Wells to read aloud from a 2003 letter from the federal Minerals Management Service that rebuked BP after the 2002 incidents.

“The circumstances surrounding these incidents have raised questions about the ability of BP to safely conduct drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico,” the letter states.

Another senior BP official, David Sims, the drilling and completions operations manager, faced more than six hours of questioning about his role during the final weeks of the Deepwater Horizon. He was pressed by investigators and lawyers about decisions not to conduct certain safety tests and to select riskier equipment for the well.

Pressed on whether workers called it “the well from hell,” Mr. Sims would say only, “It was a well that had a number of problems.”