BP’s internal investigation faults others, leading those others to slam BP

Some BP personnel who were working on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon rig have taken the fifth when investigators in Congress have asked them to testify on the April 20 explosion. At the same time, however, the embattled oil giant been conducting its own four-month investigation into the incident. BP released its findings today, and they're hardly surprising: In BP's official account of the explosion, there's plenty of blame to go around.

Granted, BP does admit some fault in the tragedy that killed 11 rig workers and spilled hundreds of millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. But the report tries to make the case that Transocean -- the company that leased the doomed rig to BP -- and oilfield services contractor Halliburton deserve much of the blame.

In a statement announcing the report's release posted to the company's website, BP says that "no single factor" led to explosion. Rather, it says, a "sequence of failures" made by "multiple companies and work teams" led to "a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces."

In conjunction with the report's release, former BP CEO Tony Hayward released a statement clearly laying blame with Halliburton's cementing work, along with flaws with Transocean's rig.

"To put it simply, there was a bad cement job and a failure of the shoe track barrier at the bottom of the well, which let hydrocarbons from the reservoir into the production casing," Hayward said.

Led by Mark Bly, BP's head of safety, along with a team of 50 or so of other investigators--most of whom are BP employees-- the report is clearly a key prong in a PR push by the oil giant. The idea, as the New York Times' Ian Urbina puts it, is to "undermine the notion that the company acted with gross negligence."

Responding to the report, Transocean released a statement blasting BP's findings as a "self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor the set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP's fatally flawed design." Transocean also contends that "In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk -- in some cases, severely."

In a similar statement, Halliburton called out "a number of substantial omissions and inaccuracies" in BP's account of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

"Halliburton remains confident that all the work it performed with respect to the Macondo well was completed in accordance with BP's specifications for its well construction plan and instructions," the statement continued. It also stipulated that "deepwater operations are inherently complex and a number of contractors are involved which routinely make recommendations to a single point of contact, the well owner. The well owner is responsible for designing the well program and any testing related to the well."

(Photo via AP/Coast Guard)