U.S. federal investigators are hearing testimonies from BP and Transocean officials in a probe into the cause of the rig explosion that led to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The hearings, jointly conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, started Monday and will continue through Friday in Houston.
Marine engineering expert Neil Cramond, BP’s Gulf of Mexico marine authority official, testified that Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon had dozens of maintenance issues in an audit conducted seven months before the rig blast. BP had recommended a five-day suspension of operations on the rig after the audit but later recommended that the rig be put back into service even though not all the issues had been addressed.
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