BP issued a 193-page report Wednesday morning assigning blame and detailing the causes of the April 20 Horizon Deepwater oil rig explosion that killed 11 people and spilled nearly five million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The internal report, conducted by the company’s safety chief Mark Bly and a team of about 50 mostly BP employees, focuses the majority of blame on BP’s contractors, particularly Transocean and Halliburton.

Transocean owned the rig and Halliburton performed cement jobs on the well. Of the 126 people on the rig when the explosion occurred, 79 were Transocean employees.

The report accepts some fault on the part of BP, admitting to “misreading pressure data that a blowout was imminent.”

BP stock, however, was trading higher this morning following the release of the report, up 3 percent to $38.39.

BP incoming chief executive Bob Dudley said, “We have said from the beginning that the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon was a shared responsibility among many entities.” 

The report has already been criticized widely.

Robert Gordon, an attorney whose firm represents more than 1,000 individuals affected by the Gulf of Mexico spill, said, "BP blaming others for the Gulf oil disaster is like Bernie Madoff blaming his accountant."

And Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chair of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee and Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, had nothing but criticism for the report. 

“This report is not BP’s mea culpa. Of their own eight key findings, they only explicitly take responsibility for half of one,” he said. 

The words "blame" and "mistake" never appear in the report. However, “fault” appears 20 times, but only once in the same sentence as “BP.”

The report also includes 25 recommendations for preventing future disasters, some of which include personnel competence, emergency systems, and rig audit and verification.

Some experts consider the report to be a public relations move on the part of BP, as the company is facing possible civil and criminal litigation by the Department of Justice, as well as lawsuits from the Coast Guard and federal minerals management agency.

 

Reach reporter Brooke Matthews here.