Report Released on 2010 BP Oil Spill

From al-Jazeera

A U.S. board's investigation into the 2010 BP oil spill concluded that a last-ditch safety device on the underwater well had multiple failures, wasn't tested properly and still poses a risk for many rigs drilling today.

The report issued Thursday by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board zeroes in on what went wrong with the blowout preventer and blames bad management and operations. They found faulty wiring in two places, a dead battery and a bent pipe in the hulking device. And that, they said, led to the dumping of 172 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the worst U.S. offshore oil disaster.

From the looks of it, no where does the report suggest that the government reconsider whether it should reconsider its decision from a few months ago to lift the ban of BP bidding for new federal drilling contracts (here). This really is an issue bigger than just BP. It sends a message to the whole industry that a companies safety record is of minimal importance when determining drilling access in the United States. If the government really wants to prevent these kind of disasters in the future, this seems like the opposite of the message they need to send.