Some oil regulators knew nothing of processes they oversaw, panel finds

The federal commission appointed by President Obama to investigate the causes of the BP oil disaster continues to trickle out revelations. The latest: its finding that Minerals Management Service agents tasked with regulating offshore drilling often knew very little, and in some cases nothing, about the operations they were supposed to be overseeing on drilling rigs and platforms.

Specifically, the commission found that many MMS agents knew little or nothing about how drilling crews should go about safely lining and sealing an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico -- one of the systematic failures that led to the Deepwater Horizon explosion April 20.

"When we asked about cementing and centralizers, they said very freely, 'We don't know about that stuff; we have to trust the companies,' " commission co-chairman William Reilly said this week. "All they get is on-the-job training. It really is fairly startling, considering how sophisticated the industry has become. And the inspectors themselves are quite aware of their needs."

What's more, the Interior Department's inspector general found that MMS inspectors were not required to view any drilling operations during their monthly visits to the drilling sites. As the Times-Picayune's David Hammer notes, "rig crews often chose to stop key work while the inspectors were visiting," since federal regulators would often give crews ample advance notice of an inspector's arrival.

In July, the White House officially disbanded the MMS -- tarnished by the BP spill and an internal investigation that revealed a litany of abuses -- renaming the agency the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.

But it wasn't just government regulators who apparently failed to oversee the oil and gas industry. In "The Spill," a Frontline/Pro Publica investigative documentary that aired Tuesday night (much to the chagrin of BP and its CEO Bob Dudley), the journalists found that independent inspectors hired by BP to monitor its pipelines in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, weren't properly certified or trained and essentially had no idea what they were doing on the job in many cases. Their incompetence -- coupled with BP's use of aging, outdated materials and equipment -- eventually resulted in the bursting of two pipelines that leaked more than 267,000 gallons of oil into the region.

Earlier this month, the Obama-appointed oil spill commission blasted the administration's handling of the spill. It's expected to report its full findings on the Deepwater Horizon disaster at hearings scheduled for Nov. 8 in Washington.