Federal investigators suppressed safety concerns with BP Atlantis oil platform, lawmaker says

Washington Post
By Josh Hicks
November 26, 2014

A Democratic lawmaker this month accused federal investigators of suppressing concerns about the structural safety of BP’s Atlantis offshore oil platform, a facility similar to the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded four years ago.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (Ariz.) said in a Nov. 6 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell that the Bureau of Ocean Energy and Management, Regulation and Enforcement failed to disclose key details about its investigation of the Atlantis, which is located about 150 miles south of New Orleans in the Gulf of Mexico.

All three structural engineers who took part in the investigation thought the final report should mention signs of trouble with some of the rig’s underwater parts, as well as disagreement over whether BP had all of its final designs in place.

None of those concerns made it into the final analysis. A December 2013 inspector general’s report revealed that the bureau, which falls under the Department of the Interior, narrowed its review in a way that excluded them.

“This new information reveals that individuals went to extreme lengths to protect BP from negative repercussions of the agency’s investigation, while ignoring the real safety threats posed by the facility,” Grijalva, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in his letter.

The inspector general’s office issued its report on the investigation nearly a year ago but never released it publicly until last week, after The Washington Post inquired about it. The environmental-law group Earthjustice first published the findings online in September, after obtaining them under the Freedom of Information Act.

Stephen Hardgrove, chief of staff for the inspector general’s office, said the watchdog agency generally only releases its investigation reports after three or four FOIA requests, a fairly common practice among inspectors general. He added that the office in is in the process of revising its standards.

“We want to find that balance between protecting privacy and giving transparency to our work,” Hardgrove said.

Grijalva said inspectors general should post their investigation findings online automatically. “You shouldn’t have to put in a request to get the information,” he said in an interview with The Post. “I think it’s just the public’s right know.”

Whistleblower concerns

The Atlantis investigations stem from a 2009 lawsuit in which former BP subcontractor Ken Abbott alleged that the platform lacked critical engineering documents and posed serious safety risks.

Abbott sued the oil company under the False Claims Act, which holds companies liable for defrauding the government. He said BP had cheated the government by misrepresenting its designs.

In response to the whistleblower claims, Grijalva and other members of Congress issued a letter to the bureau in February 2010 asking the agency to investigate the Atlantis, specifically to determine whether BP obtained all of its engineer-certified drawings before building the platform.

The bureau agreed to the analysis and released its results in March 2011, concluding that Abbott’s claims lacked merit. But Abbott’s legal team challenged the review as flawed and incomplete, prompting the inspector general’s office to investigate the review.

The plaintiffs alleged a possible conflict of interest, noting that the bureau’s lead investigator had also approved the Atlantis permits. They also said the bureau’s review never examined whether officials properly applied a key permitting regulation before construction began.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon exploded two days after the bureau’s Atlantis investigation began in Houston in April 2010. A federal commission concluded in a January 2011 report that BP and its contractors rushed to complete the Deepwater Horizon and failed to take precautions that might have prevented the blowout, which killed 11 workers and triggered the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The commission blamed oil-industry management and ineffective government oversight for the explosion, warning that “the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur.”

The Deepwater Horizon was a mobile drilling rig used for oil exploration, while the Atlantis is a production platform that pumps oil from an existing well. Although the structures serve different purposes, both types can cause massive oil spills if severely damaged or poorly constructed.

Internal disagreements

During the early stages of the bureau’s Atlantis investigation, the structural engineers determined that BP did not have some of its final drawings for the platform.

But other examiners – including the lead examiner and some production engineers, whose expertise differs from that of structural engineers — were not as concerned about the document issue. They accepted BP’s explanation that the drawings existed but were not always stamped as final. They also asserted that some of the designs, particularly those for subsea components, were not even covered by the regulation in question at the time.

The structural engineers flagged other issues with the platform, including burn marks, gas leaks and the formation of crystals on wellheads, all of which they considered to be signs of potential trouble. The lead investigator dismissed those concerns as outside the scope of the bureau’s original review, the inspector general said.

At one point, a structural engineer asked to be removed from the project, saying she did not “want her name associated with the investigation,” according to the inspector general.

The bureau’s final report

After several rounds of heated internal debate, the bureau released a report in March 2011 that rejected Abbot’s allegations and said BP had obtained the necessary certifications. To satisfy the structural engineers, the agency encouraged them to outline their dissenting views apart from the official review.

Before the bureau issued its final report, then-director Michael Bromwich assured a colleague by e-mail that the agency could release the findings without fear that one structural engineer would “create issues about it.”

The inspector general’s office determined that the investigation was not flawed and incomplete. But it noted that the bureau “deliberately focused on the issue of the engineering documentation,” rather than the structural engineers’ other concerns, such as the gas leaks and burn marks.

The watchdog also downplayed concerns about a conflict of interest with the lead investigator for the bureau’s review, saying another supervisor oversaw the project during its final six months.

Bromwich objected to Grijalva’s suggestion that the bureau suppressed critical information in its report.

“Professional disagreements arise in many investigations, and the disagreements in this matter were resolved responsibly and appropriately, with repeated efforts to consult with the disaffected groups,” the former director said in a statement. “Suggestions that Congress was misled, conflicts of interest were ignored, or safety considerations were downplayed — as alleged in the congressman’s letter — are simply unsupported by the facts.”

BP spokesman Brett Clanton expressed support for the findings from both investigations, saying they included input from all investigators involved and found no violations by the oil company or its offshore rig. “The Atlantis platform is safe and is in full compliance with all applicable rules,” he said.

Abbott’s case

A federal district court in Houston dismissed Abbott’s lawsuit in August, deciding that the bureau’s review was sound and that the plaintiffs had not identified any design errors.

“They have not blown a whistle,” U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes said of the plaintiffs in her harshly-worded conclusion. “They have blown their own horn.”

Food & Water Watch, an advocacy group that joined Abbott in the whistleblower lawsuit, recently filed a motion for the court to reconsider the case in light of the inspector general’s report.

“We believe that we are right on the facts and the law,” the organization’s executive director, Wenonah Hauter, said in a statement. “We continue to believe that the BP Atlantis represents a significant threat to the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf Coast communities because the platform lacks final, engineer-approved safety and operations documents.”

Interior spokeswoman Emily Beyer acknowledged Grijalva’s letter and said the department plans to respond. The agency had not sent a reply to the congressman as of Tuesday.