Environmental concerns were never foremost in the minds of BP or the federal agency responsible for managing the OCS when plans for drilling on the Mississippi Canyon block 252 were formulated. The Department of Interior's Minerals Management Service exempted BP from detailed NEPA requirements after three assessments said a massive oil spill was unlikely. The MMS, which made the news during the Regime for wild parties conducted by its employees, gave British Petroleum a "categorical exclusion". In the Gulf of Mexico where there are hundreds of platforms operating, the agency routinely grants 250 to 400 waivers a year. Environmentalists say the agency is little more than a rubber stamp for self-serving drilling plans. BP lobbied the White House Council on Environmental Quality to provide categorial exemptions more often. BP spent $16 billion lobbying in Washington in 2009, triple what it spent two years before. After the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP may find the going tougher: an acoustic trigger on a blowout preventer costs $500,000. Before the oil patch boys led by Vice-President 'Darth' Cheney got to the agency, the MMS proposed in 2000 to mandate the mechanism for all OCS rigs. By 2003 the proposed requirement was dropped.
{5.4.10}BP continues to deny that it did not take adequate measures to prevent a blowout of its deep water well on the Mississippi Canyon block. A spokesperson for the company said an acoustic switch on the blowout preventer that could activate the BOP from the surface, or subsurface cut off valves, "were not appropriate for a discovery well". Whether the well was classifiable as a discovery well or a production well is really immaterial. What is important is the Deepwater Horizon was operating in an environmentally sensitive region at great depth where unknown gas pressures could pose a hazard of a well blowout, and the well at the time of the explosion was producing an 8,000 barrel a day flow of crude. A Transocean employee who escaped the flames also said the well was drilling down to 22,000 feet, in excess of the federally permitted 20,000 feet. Facts now emerging show the well services firm Halliburton was hired to cement the well bore in place to prevent subsurface gas pressures from escaping up the bore. Cementing or capping is typically a difficult process, often prone to accidents. Over the pass 14 years, 18 of 30 blowouts have been linked to cementing by the Minerals Management Service. A Wall Street energy analyst told the Wall Street Journal that faulty cementing was the likely cause of gas reaching the surface, and a lawsuit filed by Transocean employees alleges the contractor Halliburton was negligent in it's cementing operation. Halliburton was also implicated in the blowout that spilled tens of thousands of barrels of crude oil into the Timor Sea for ten weeks before the well was shut down. The investigation into the Timor Sea incident is still proceeding. Cameron International Corp. built the blowout preventer used on the well that did not stop the gas explosion from occurring. BP said drilling a relief well will begin in two weeks. In the meantime the company will attempt to lower a 98 ton steel dome over the largest leak to contain it. The operation has never been tried at over a mile down.[photo: www.businessinsider.com]