BP, others trade blame for oil blast

Early finger-pointing began Monday among companies involved in the oil rig explosion and leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico on the eve of the first congressional hearings into the accident.

A top American executive for BP, Lamar McKay, said a critical safety device known as a blowout-preventer failed catastrophically. Separately, the owner of the rig off Louisiana's coast said that BP managed it and was responsible for all work conducted at the site. A third company defended work that it performed on the deepwater oil well as "accepted industry practice" prior to last month's explosion.

"We are looking at why the blowout preventer did not work, because that was to be the fail-safe in case of an accident," McKay, chairman and president of BP America, said in testimony prepared for a Senate hearing Tuesday. "Transocean's blowout preventer failed to operate." A copy of McKay's testimony was obtained by The Associated Press.

The chief executive for Swiss-based Transocean, which owned the oil rig and the blowout preventer, shifted blame to BP.

"All offshore oil and gas production projects begin and end with the operator, in this case BP," CEO Steven Newman said in his Senate testimony, also obtained by the AP. Newman said that BP was responsible for submitting a detailed plan specifying where and how a well is to be drilled, cased, cemented and completed.

Newman also said that BP's contractor, Halliburton Inc., was responsible for encasing the well in cement, putting a temporary plug in the top of the well, and ensuring the cement's integrity. That cementing process was dictated by BP's well plan, Newman said.

A Halliburton executive, Tim Probert, said the company safely finished a cementing operation 20 hours before the rig went up in flames. Probert said Halliburton completed work on the well according to accepted industry practice and at the direction of federal regulators.

The blame-game took hold on Capitol Hill as Congress and U.S. investigators were to begin a series of hearings in Washington and on the Gulf Coast. Two Senate hearings were set for Tuesday and a House of Representatives hearing was scheduled for Wednesday. In Louisiana, near the disaster site, a six-member panel that includes investigators from the Interior Department and Coast Guard was to begin two days of hearings.

McKay, the BP executive, said the company wants answers itself. He disclosed that the company has at least 40 people internally investigating the accident, but he acknowledged that the cause is still a mystery.

Transocean has its own investigative team, Newman said.  "We are looking at our own actions and those of our contractors," McKay wrote in his Senate testimony.

Newman said it makes no sense to suggest the blowout preventer caused the accident. He said it was ironic that attention was being focused on the blowout preventer, because at the time of the explosion drilling at the site was finished.

The blowout preventer, made by Houston-based Cameron Inc., is a 450-ton piece of equipment that sits on top of the wellhead during drilling operations. It contains valves that can be closed remotely in case of an accident or increase in pressure.

"The systems are intended to be fail-safe; sadly and for reasons we do not yet understand, in this case, they were not," McKay said.