Poor Decisions Set Stage for Deepwater Horizon Disaster, Panel Finds

"Failure to manage the risks of a complex well and to learn from an earlier narrowly missed disaster contributed significantly to the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a panel investigating the BP oil spill said Wednesday.

"Numerous decisions" to continue operations despite repeated warnings of problems "suggest an insufficient consideration of risk and a lack of operating discipline," according to a report issued by a committee at the National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council, which was convened at the request of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

The report, an interim document, is the most recent in a series of findings that have gradually brought into sharper focus the many factors that led to the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. More detailed answers are months away. This week, a forensics investigation began on the battered blowout preventer, a series of valves that failed to seal the runaway well."

Neela Banerjee reports for the Tribune Washington Bureau November 17, 2010.

SEE ALSO:

"BP Chose Less Expensive, Higher-Risk Routes Before Oil Well Blowout, Scientists Say" (New Orleans Times-Picayune)

"Academy Tallies Missteps by Gulf Drillers" (Dot Earth)

"Interim Report on Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig Blowout and Ways to Prevent Such Events"(National Academy of Sciences)