Congressional Officials Had Questions About BP Safety
According to a recent New York Times report, formerly undisclosed documents show that Congressional officials expressed safety concerns about offshore drilling, the potential for oil spills, and BP itself, well in advance of April's Deepwater Horizon catastrophe. In particular, concerns were raised regarding the safety of another BP oil platform based in the Gulf of Mexico, known as the Atlantis. Federal regulators with the former Minerals Management Service were not especially responsive to Congressional inquiries on the matter, informing members of Congress in 2009 that they could not specifically address concerns about the potential for a "catastrophic" accident on the Atlantis.
The communications between federal regulators and Congressional officials came to light when the Interior Department responded to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times.
According to the Times coverage, before the catastrophic loss of the Deepwater Horizon and the resulting oil spill, the MMS often had trouble getting attention from members of Congress and their aides, absent some pending issue with political implications. That all changed with April's BP disaster, which led to the reorganization and renaming of the MMS, now known as the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
Even after the Deepwater Horizon tragedy, officials with the federal regulatory agency apparently resisted providing some records because they held "proprietary" information that belonged to BP.
Notable among the information released was a letter, issued to BP by federal regulators a year prior to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon, warning BP to exercise caution in drilling operations in light of "indications of shallow gas and possible water flow."
An ongoing formal investigation regarding safety issues aboard the Atlantis continues at this time.
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