Gulf oil spill: BP set to avoid gross negligence charge

Tim Webb
London Guardian
January 6, 2011

BP is more likely to escape the potentially ruinous charge of gross negligence, according to City analysts, after a powerful US commission blamed “systemic” causes for the Gulf of Mexico disaster.

• A d v e r t i s e m e n t

Barack Obama’s national commission released part of its final report into the disaster last night on Wednesday night. The report, to be published next week, could influence several other parallel investigations into the disaster that are yet to conclude.

The commission was scathing in its criticism of BP, as well as its contractors Halliburton and Transocean, which it blamed for a collective “failure of management”. But it added that it had found no evidence that the blowout which led to last April’s disaster was the result of “aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials”.

Fresh food that lasts from eFoodsDirect (AD)

Commission co-chair William K Reilly said: “So a key question posed from the outset by this tragedy is, do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences, or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry? Given the documented failings of both Transocean and Halliburton, both of which serve the offshore industry in virtually every ocean, I reluctantly conclude we have a system-wide problem.”

Read full article

This article was posted: Thursday, January 6, 2011 at 2:08 pm

---

---

---

---