Macondo commission releases investigation report, Halliburton comments

Offshore staff

HOUSTON – The National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling investigation report was released to the public today. While Halliburton says it continues to examine the report, it does disagree with some of the findings it has seen.

In short, the report made the following conclusions:

1. The event could have been prevented.
2. It was caused by mistakes made by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean and shows that the safety culture of the industry is in doubt.
3. Deepwater exploration and production have risks for which neither the government nor industry is prepared.
4. Fundamental reform is needed to assure human safety and environmental protection. Regulatory oversight of leasing, energy exploration, and production needs reform in both structure and decision making.
5. Technology, laws and regulations, and practices for containing, responding to, and cleaning up spills lags behind the risk of deepwater drilling. Government must close the gap and industry must support rather than resist the effort.
6. Scientific understanding of environmental conditions in sensitive environments is inadequate.

A complete version of the report is available at http://www.oilspillcommission.gov/.

Halliburton’s initial disagreement is in regard to comments about the foam stability tests related to the cement pumped on the well. In general, Halliburton says, the commission selectively omitted information provided by Halliburton concerning the amount of time required for the foam stability test to be completed.

1/11/2011