WASHINGTON - As thousands of gallons of oil continued to spew from a damaged well in the Gulf of Mexico, grim-faced industry executives came under withering attack Tuesday on Capitol Hill from senators who accused them of a "cascade of failures" and of trying to shift blame to each other.
In back-to-back hearings, senators accused BP, which owns the well, of misrepresenting blow-out preventers placed atop wells as fail-safe and of telling federal regulators that the drilling would have "no adverse impacts" to the environment.
"We can't have a world where people say one thing before they get a permit and then just act like they never said it," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., told Lamar McKay, chairman and president of BP America. "You said we won't have a problem."
"We obviously did not expect a situation like this," McKay said.
The BP executive also told senators that the company was determined "to do all we humanly can to stop the leak, contain the spill, and to minimize the damage suffered by the environment and the people of the Gulf Coast."
But he said that Transocean Ltd., owner and operator of drilling rig, had "responsibility for the safety of drilling operations."
Steve Newman, Transocean's president and CEO, seemed to point a finger at yet another contractor, Halliburton. Although the investigation of the cause continues, he told the senators, "there was a sudden, catastrophic failure of the cement, the casing, or both."
An executive with Halliburton, which did the cementing, said it was operating under BP's plan. Halliburton's work was done "in accordance with accepted industry practice" and BP's plans, said Tim Probert, president of the company's global business lines.