Government Report Says BP Atlantis Drilling Rig in Gulf of Mexico is Safe

Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Environment,Government,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Maritime Law,World Maritime News on March 4, 2011

A new BP Atlantis government report has been released that clears BP Atlantis rig located in the Gulf of Mexico of any serious allegations. The report “found no grounds for suspending the operations of the Atlantis … or revoking BP’s designation as an operator,” according to the report by the Bureau for Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

The bureau is the successor to the troubled Minerals Management Service, which failed to properly oversee BP’s Deepwater Horizon, the rig that exploded April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 oil rig workers and causing the worst oil spill in history.

The Huffington Post reports:

Last year, a whistleblower first made public his claims about serious mismanagement on the massive Atlantis rig — that it was operating with incomplete and inaccurate engineering documents. Those complaints were later substantiated by BP’s own investigation, in which it commissioned an independent firm to assess the claims. One official warned that the problems with documentation could “lead to catastrophic operator error,” according to records and interviews in the report.

Last February, two months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, 19 members of Congress called on the agency that oversees offshore oil drilling to investigate whistleblower Kenneth Abbott’s complaints about the Atlantis, which is stationed in 7,070 feet of water roughly 150 miles south of New Orleans. BP’s response at the time was that the allegations were “without any substance.”

Read Atlantis Report

Related News:
Reuters