On Sunday in Washington DC, BP’s oil spill investigators came head to head for the first time with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) committee appointed by the US Department of the Interior to determine the cause of the spill.
During the meeting, Najmedin Meshkati at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, pointed to a gaping hole in the company’s investigation into the Deepwater Horizon blowout that has previously been highlighted by a New Scientist report. BP “didn’t address human performance issues and organisational factors which, in any major accident investigation, constitute major contributing factors [to workplace accidents]”, he said.
BP’s report, released earlier this month, highlighted eight failures that led to the Gulf spill. In a presentation outlining the company’s findings, Mark Bly, its head of safety and operations, admitted that three of the failures were partially caused by errors in human judgement.
A pressure test which would have revealed problems in the drill “was incorrectly deemed a success by BP and Transocean rig personnel”, he said. And on three occasions, real-time monitoring data from the rig indicated that pipe pressure had increased, when it should have dropped. These indicators went “unobserved or unrecognised” for about 40 minutes, which “significantly shortened” the workers’ emergency response time, Bly said.
BP’s report noted that “simultaneous operations”, such as preparing for the next operation “may have distracted the rig crew”. But at the meeting Meshkati said the report did not address the “root causes of ‘distraction'” such as worker fatigue, long shifts, and a lack of safety culture at the company.
Other members of the NAE committee have asked questions about mechanical failures, such as why an engine did not shut down in the presence of gas, and how oil and gas travelled up the pipe.
The committee’s interim findings are due in October.
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