BP acknowledged in a recent letter that it has routinely failed to comply with a federal regulation requiring drilling companies to certify that their blowout preventers are able to block a runaway well.
But that's because the Minerals Management Service, the government agency charged with overseeing offshore drilling operations, never asked the company to comply, officials wrote.
The blowout preventer is a 450-ton, four-story stack of valves, pistons and slicers that is supposed to be the final fail-safe to close a well at the seafloor if it starts spewing oil and gas. That device failed to operate properly April 20 when the Macondo well off the Louisiana coast blew out of control, and it hasn't worked in several attempts to activate it since.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, said in a letter Thursday that he became concerned when he read a Times-Picayune article last month that said the MMS official in charge of reviewing BP's application for the Macondo well was unaware of a regulation requiring oil companies to certify that their blowout preventers can cut drill pipe to shut off a flowing well under specific conditions.
Grassley asked BP in May to show that it is in compliance with the federal regulation that requires oil companies to provide MMS with proof that the massive safety devices they use to close off wells are "capable of shearing the drill pipe in the hole under maximum anticipated surface pressures."
The company responded that it applies for permits to drill oil wells "in accordance with the process prescribed by MMS officials," but it goes on to say that it was not "MMS practice" to require anyone to comply with the particular section of the federal code in question.
"I find it very disturbing that BP asserts that the 'practice' in oil drilling is to avoid current laws designed to keep our beaches safe," Grassley responded in his letter Thursday. "And I am outraged that MMS is looking the other way."
Frank Patton, the MMS official who approved the BP application to drill at Macondo, already testified that he wasn't familiar with the law he was supposed to enforce.
Also, in his letter Thursday, Grassley called attention to an internal BP document his investigators obtained that showed the company knew the leak could be as bad as 60,000 barrels a day, even while BP's public estimates were far lower, Grassley said. Only recently did government scientists get enough data to determine the spill could be 60,000 barrels a day.
Grassley said he didn't know the date of BP's private estimate, but he demanded to know when it was created and added that "Americans have a right to know that BP made these estimates, the date these estimates were determined and why they were not disclosed at that time."
Establishing the flow rate is critical, not only for understanding how much oil is gushing out and needs to be contained or cleaned up, but also because fines BP would have to pay under anti-pollution laws are based on how many barrels are spilled.
