By Gerald Helguero: Subscribe to Gerald's RSS feed
September 7, 2010 8:24 PM EDT
Amid multiple government and corporate investigations, BP Plc will release tomorrow its long awaited internal report about the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion which led to the deaths of 11 workers and was followed by the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
The report, to be released on Wednesday morning, comes nearly five months since the April 20 disaster and will play a key role in explaining the company's accountability to the public for the spill, which released 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico according to the government, and will for the first time explain the company's position on the causes of the incident.
It will also be one point of reference in helping to determine what legal liability the company will have to bear for the spill. While BP has taken responsibility for cleanup and Gulf restoration costs, BP has so far refused to publicly disclose any conclusions about what caused the incident, citing its pending internal investigation.
BP has previously said it has been investigating cement seals, a complex set of pipes installed beneath the sea floor known as a casing system, well pressure tests, oil and gas detection through the blowout preventer, and backup systems for activating the blowout preventer - a failed complex safety device which was meant as a last measure of defense against the spill.
BP, as part owner of the Macondo Well, is one of several parties answering to authorities in determining what happened on the day of the explosion and in the months preceding the event.
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Other parties being investigated include Transocean Ltd, the oil rig operator under contract to BP, which had a large role to play in the drilling of the well. Transocean owned the blowout preventer, whose valves failed to close and shut off the flow of oil after the Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire, sank and ruptured pipes nearly 5,000 feet below the surface.
Halliburton, a firm which played a role in cementing the well in the days and weeks before the explosion, has previously said it complied with government standards and the well owner's construction plan.
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