Rigs' drill parts lack endorsements
By Dina Cappiello
Associated Press
Dec 2, 2010

Washington - The equiipment failures bamed for the Gulf oil spill might have been detected if the owners of the Deepwater Horizon continued to have the rig's drilling equipment verified by independent expers --- something federal regulators mistakenly thought was happening offshore.

At least three government drilling engineers assigned to the federal investigation into the spill have acknowledged they had mistakenly assumed these thrid-party examinations were taking place. The examinations are voluntary under US law and most rigs don't do them, even though they are more hands-on than routine government inspections.

The laspe in the offshore energy industry's safety net has emerged as a key finding in the joint federal inquiry by the Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocena Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement into the largest offshore oil spill in US history.

Now, the Obama administation has ordered every rig in the Gulf of Mexico to subject a central piece of drilling hardware --- the blowout preventer --- to certification by a third party before any can drill again. It is also investigating the extent of the regulators' fundamental misunderstandings.

"They were under the assumption that the certificate covers the whole aspect of the vessel --- the vessel stability, the vessel conditions, the drilling unit, the drilling package, the whole nine yards," David Dykes, chief of the bureau's Office of Safety Management for the Gulf of Mexico region, said at a recent hearing in Washington.1772

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