One area the investigation will focus on is whether the blowout prevention and emergency shutoff devices had been tested and properly maintained for use at the drilling facility.(Photo courtesy of the US Mineral Management Service)
Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.
Transcript
Next week Congress will hold what’s likely to be the first of many hearings on the drilling rig explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Lester Graham reports this is just the latest Congressional investigation into BP’s operations.
Congressman Bart Stupak chairs the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. He says you can add this oil spill in the Gulf to several oil spills on Alaska’s North Slope and the refinery explosion that killed 15 people in Texas City in 2005. He says earlier this year he fired off a letter about billions of dollars in budget cuts BP just recently made.
“We wanted to make sure these cuts don’t negatively affect the safety of the workers or the environment. I mean, we put that in writing to them in January. And when I heard about the blow-out and the fire down there and the accident, they didn’t have to tell me the company that was bitten by this. I just figured it was BP.”
Stupak’s subcommittee will be questioning BP officials, the drilling rig operators, TransOcean, and Halliburton which did maintenance work on the rig.
For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.