BP Executives Called to Testify Before Senate Committee

Congress is taking a look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

By U.S. News Staff

May 6, 2010 RSS Feed Print

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BP and the other two companies involved in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have been called to testify before the Senate next week, Sen. Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works committee said yesterday. The committee has scheduled a hearing for the afternoon of Tuesday, May 11 and is expecting testimony from BP, Transocean, and Halliburton officials, as well as from fishery and wildlife experts. (Transocean was the owner of the rig that exploded last week in the Gulf, and Halliburton did work on the casing).

The hearing will come just hours after another Senate hearing on offshore oil drilling--the Senate energy committee, led by New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, is expected to grill the Interior Department next Tuesday morning over its plans for offshore leasing and drilling and its role in the Gulf accident.

The Interior Department, which has long been accused of being too cozy with the oil industry, has come under fire following revelations that it did not require the BP Deepwater Horizon project--the site of the accident--to undergo a major environmental analysis last year, concluding that there wasn't likely to be a spill there. Bingaman's hearing had originally been scheduled for Thursday but was postponed because of the spill. Boxer's committee has yet to release a full witness list but says it expects several coastal state senators to testify at the hearing as well.

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Tags:: Department of the Interior,; Barbara Boxer,; Jeff Bingaman,; Gulf of Mexico,; oil

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BP has accepted responsbility for the oil spill but it was President Obama who decided that the people and the eco system of the Gulf were expendable.
Why is the senate not asking him such questions as:
Did you and your cabinet consider the worse case scenario before allowing drilling?
Did advice include the consequences of the loss of the rig?
were you advised on the possibility of irreparable damage occuring to the well head?
Did you consider the resulting potential damage to the Gulfs eco system?
In light of previous American rig disasters such as Pipa Alpha in the North Sea where 167 American lives were lost, did you consider bringing in stricter operating regulations in the Gulf?
Who is really culpable?

David Phillips of NH 10:25AM June 10, 2010

Perhaps congress needs to relax the strangle hold on the environment controls so a new refinery can be economically possible and then the price of fuel will come down while demand is decreasing. The lions share of the low income citizen's income goes for energy to fuel their homes. their cars, for purchase of petroleum based products and for all commodities because all diesel fuel increases raises the delivery prices to the food markets and all other retail outlets and ups the price of food. The low income also are helping to pay the BIG bonus checks for the oil execs too so in that respect they aren't being discriminated against. Also, some of the unemployed can't afford to fuel in their cars to go to an interview. When the gas price goes up so does unemployment.See a trend?

Lee Hansen of MI 8:03AM May 08, 2010

Oil spills happen, both naturally and otherwise. We know this, and we have known this for many years. But we still need to drive our cars to work, and make plastic, and heat our homes. No one is willing to give that up, no matter how many dead manatees make it onto the news. And so any reactionary measures are likely to cause more harm than good. The best we can do is minimize oil spills by imposing rigorous standards of procedure, multiple layers of oversight, and trying to reduce overall consumption of oil as much as possible.
Here's what we have to gain from getting out of oil (Middle Eastern or otherwise): (1) no more dependence on decadent dictatorships - we can't really go around preaching peace and freedom when we're forced to publicly make out with crime lords, opium barons, and people who consider themselves living gods; (2) significantly reduced greenhouse gas pollution; (3) we can stop getting ripped off by OPEC; (4) we can avoid coming tensions with Russia, Canada, and Greenland over access to Arctic oil deposits; (5) the exorbitant prices our citizens pay to meet their daily energy needs will no longer line the pockets of speculators, currency manipulators, and day-traders; (6) we will have incentives to develop new energy technologies, which we can then market to the rest of the world.
Read more: http://www.theinductive.com/blog/2010/5/7/our-visceral-energy-policy.html

Christopher Carr of MA 1:34PM May 07, 2010

BP Executives Called to Testify Before Senate Committee

Congress is taking a look at the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

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