BP Bly Investigation Report: How Reliable is it?

Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Environment,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Texas Maritime News,Transocean,World Maritime News on September 8, 2010

The long awaited Bly Investigation Report was released by BP on Wednesday, September 8, 2010. The report was generated by a BP investigative team led by Mark Bly, BP’s head of safety and operations.

BP oil spill from the broken wellhead at the site of the Deepwater Horizon oil in Gulf of Mexico

The BP Bly report states that it does not represent the views of any individual or entity other than the investigation team. The investigation team has produced the report exclusively for and at the request of BP in accordance with its Terms of Reference, and any decision to release the report publicly is the responsibility of BP. It has not been prepared in response to any third party investigation, inquiry or litigation. Read Summary of Bly Report.

In preparing this report, BP states that the investigation team did not evaluate evidence against legal standards, including but not limited to standards regarding causation, liability, intent and the admissibility of evidence in court or other proceedings. They state that this report is based on the information available to the investigation team during the investigation; availability of additional information might have led to other conclusions or altered the team’s findings and conclusions.

Steve Gordon, a Houston maritime lawyer, who represents several of the oil  rig survivors of the Deepwater Horizon, and a family of one of the 11 workers who died,  takes aim at the lack of sworn testimony from the various people interviewed by BP investigators.

Gordon says.,

This is an important consideration because people interviewed, not under sworn-testimony conditions, can make comments that are untruthful and there is no legal recourse to pursue perjury in such cases.

Additional Comments by Steve Gordon:

As expected, the report:

1. Spreads liability to Transocean, the crew of the Deepwater Horizon, Halliburton, the designer and builder of the Deepwater Horizon and other companies
2. Was conducted in a manner that will foster years and years of litigation thereby extending the time that BP will totally have to “come out of pocket”
3. And was not comprehensive in reviewing all the data that BP admittedly has available to it.

Now that the BP CEOs have all testified in front of Congress with “I don’know”, “let’s wait until the Bly Report comes out rather than speculate”, etc., it is highly doubtful that they will be re-called to answer questions like:

• Why did the annulus cement barrier not isolate the hydrocarbons?
• Why did well control response actions fail to regain control of the well?
• Why did the BOP emergency mode fail to seal the well?
• And on and on.

Already, one can easily sense the lack of journalistic zeal with this entire matter. However, the lives of the Deepwater Horizon 11 families and all the injured are slowly being forgot about as they have been swept into the Multi-District Litigation (MDL) process in Louisiana.