Spill Panel Finds U.S. Was Slow to React

By Stephen Power and Tennille Tracy

The Obama administration was slow to ramp up its response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, then overreacted as public criticism turned the disaster into a political liability, the staff of a special commission investigating the disaster say in papers released Wednesday.

In four papers issued by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, commission investigators fault the administration for giving too much credence to initial estimates that just 1,000 barrels of oil a day were flowing from the ruptured BP PLC well, and for later allowing political concerns to drive decisions such as how to deploy people and material—such as oil-containing boom—to contain the spreading oil.

"Though some of the command structure was put in place very quickly, in other respects the mobilization of resources to combat the spill seemed to lag," the commission investigators found.

Coast Guard and other federal emergency-response officials told the commission they wouldn't have acted differently if they had known the spill rate was much greater than BP's initial 1,000 barrel a day estimate.

But the spill commission investigators write that "for the first ten days of the spill, it appears that a sense of over optimism affected responders."

The commission staff said it is "possible that inaccurate flow-rate figures may have hindered the sub-sea efforts to stop and to contain the flow of oil at the wellhead."

The government later revised the estimate of the oil flow to between 35,000 and 60,000 barrels a day.

In a written joint statement Wednesday, the White House's acting budget director, Jeffrey Zients, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration chief Jane Lubchenco said "the federal government response was full force and immediate, and the response focused on state and local plans and evolved when needed."

Read more... 

 

Posted via email from