BP’s spill probe ignored management failures, safety expert says

BP deviated from its own policy on responding to accidents by not determining how management contributed to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a company safety expert who led an internal investigation of the disaster testified this morning. Mark Bly, who was promoted to an executive management position at BP after the report was issued, said he and former BP CEO Tony Hayward decided on the scope of the investigation days after the Macondo well blowout and Deepwater Horizon rig explosion off Louisiana’s coast. Plaintiffs attorneys at a civil trial in federal court in New Orleans are trying to show BP’s report was self-serving, incomplete, and designed to shield the company from billions of dollars in damages that are a subject of the trial. Bly told U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier that he could have gone further in the probe but that there were limitations in terms of availability of witnesses and information. Bly said that, among other things, the probe didn’t analyze the potential that cost-cutting contributed to the blast. He said it was decided to limit the probe to operational causes rather than include systemic causes, even though company policy at the time required both factors to be considered. “We got an exception from it,” Bly said of the policy. His testimony highlighted the opening of the fourth day of the trial. Plaintiffs also are expected to call to the stand petroleum technology expert and geoscience professor Andrew Hurst. The Houston Chronicle has this full story, as well as overviews of the first three days of the trial, here.