Regret, apology not part of BP's Gulf oil spill report

BP took some of the blame, acknowledging among other things that it misinterpreted a key pressure test of the well that blew out and eventually spewed 206 million gallons of oil into the Gulf. But in a possible preview of its legal strategy, it also pointed the finger — and plenty — at its partners on the doomed rig.

The highly technical, 193-page report released Wednesday attributes the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history and the deadly rig explosion that set it off to a complex chain of failures both human and mechanical. Some of those problems have been made public over the past 4 1/2 months, such as the failure of the blowout preventer to clamp the well shut.

In its report, BP said that it was a bad cementing job that contributed to the blowout and that the design of the well was probably not to blame. It also said “more thorough review and testing by Halliburton” and “stronger quality assurance” by BP's well team might have identified weaknesses in the plan for cementing.

“BP blaming others for the Gulf oil disaster is like Bernie Madoff blaming his accountant,” said Robert Gordon, an attorney for fishermen, hotels and restaurants affected by the spill.

The report acknowledged, as investigators have previously suggested, that BP's engineers and employees of Transocean misinterpreted a pressure test of the well's integrity before the explosion.

They also blamed employees on the rig from both companies for failing to respond to other warning signs that the well was in danger of blowing out.

Transocean blasted the report as a self-serving attempt to conceal what it called the real cause of the explosion — “BP's fatally flawed well design.”

Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that shot up the drill column and ignited. But they don't know exactly how and why the gas escaped. And they don't know for certain why the blowout preventer didn't work.

But in its report, BP said the blowout preventer didn't do its job because it was damaged in the explosion and because it had a bad valve and weak batteries. Transocean, which was responsible for maintaining the blowout preventer, has insisted the batteries were in working order.

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