BP 'concentrated on personal safety over the big systemic hazards' before Gulf of Mexico spill

BP has been found to concentrate too much on personal safety over the big systemic hazards that led to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a US government safety panel has concluded.

The oil giant has been criticised that it is not strict on overall safety on the oil rigs, and it instead concentrates too much on personal safety, which led to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010. 11 workers were killed in the April 2010 explosion, and around 200 million gallons of oil were leaked into the Gulf of Mexico.

According to the report, the contractor-owner split between BP and Transocean made a major difference in accident prevention with the oil disaster. The report was conducted by the US Chemical Safety Board and was presented at a hearing in Houston, Texas.

"BP applied lesser process safety standards" to rigs contracted out than it does to its own facilities, safety board managing director Daniel Horowitz told the Associated Press. "In reality, both Transocean and BP dropped the ball on major accident hazards in this case."

BP slipped up primarily because it failed to assess the major accident risks for the activities of the Deepwater Horizon rig or for the Macondo well, investigators concluded. Instead, it only concentrated on BP assets, rather than the rigs it contracted.

The safety panel added that BP was too "focused on financial risks, not process safety risks". Additionally, after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the company’s own accident investigation report “recommended requiring hazard reviews of BP-owned and contracted rigs”, the safety board’s presentation says.

A BP spokesman said the accident "was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple parties", and that the company "has taken concrete steps to further enhance safety and risk management", including new drilling standards for the Gulf of Mexico that exceed current regulatory requirements.

Posted by Joseph Hutton