Final Report - National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling

 "a culture of complacency"
from the Final Report to the President:



"Drilling in deepwater brings new risks, not yet completely addressed by the reviews of where it is safe to drill, what could go wrong, and how to respond if something does  go awry. The drilling rigs themselves bristle with potentially dangerous machinery. The deepwater environment is cold, dark, distant, and under high pressures—and the oil and gas reservoirs, when found, exist at even higher pressures (thousands of pounds per square inch), compounding the risks if a well gets out of control. The Deepwater Horizon and Macondo well vividly illustrated all of those very real risks. When a failure happens at such depths, regaining control is a formidable engineering challenge—and the costs of failure, we now know, can be catastrophically high.  


In the years before the Macondo blowout, neither industry nor government adequately  addressed these risks. Investments in safety, containment, and response equipment and  practices failed to keep pace with the rapid move into deepwater drilling. Absent major  crises, and given the remarkable financial returns available from deepwater reserves, the  business culture succumbed to a false sense of security. The Deepwater Horizon disaster  exhibits the costs of a culture of complacency."

Final Report (Released 01/11/2011) | National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling