LOS ANGELES — The blowout preventer designed to shut down the BP well in an emergency couldn’t stop the gush of oil into the Gulf of Mexico because a damaged piece of pipe got in the way, according to a report released Wednesday.
When the Deepwater Horizon rig crew lost control of the well, the force of rushing oil buckled a section of drill pipe, which became stuck in the blowout preventer. The device had been activated, but the mangled pipe made it impossible for shearing rams to close and plug the flow of oil.
Det Norske Veritas compiled the report for the U.S. Interior Department after the contracting firm examined the blowout preventer in the massive April 20 spill. The blowout preventer was raised from the seafloor in early September and hauled to a NASA facility for testing.
Had it worked, the blowout preventer may have averted the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The rig exploded, killing 11 men and setting off a deep-sea leak that took months to stop. By the time the wellhead was capped in July, it had released more than 200 million gallons of crude into the gulf.
The next in a series of Coast Guard hearings on the disaster, set for early next month in Louisiana, will deal with the blowout preventer findings.
Various probes have attributed the rig explosion and spill to a series of missteps by the companies involved in the Deepwater operation, as well as lax regulation by a federal agency.
Meanwhile, the Coast Guard said tests suggest a sheen of oil reported Sunday along a 30-mile section of shoreline near Grand Isle, La., came from a well-capping operation unrelated to BP that has been fixed.
