Via the AP:

About 90 percent of the Gulf coast has been deemed clean, according to officials. The plan spells out protocol for when an area still needs to be cleaned and when BP’s responsibility for that ends.

Louisiana officials wouldn’t give their approval because they were concerned about what they perceived as a lack of long-term monitoring in the document. They also complained that the Coast Guard gave them only five days to review the plan, according to a letter sent to the agency by Garret Graves, a top aide to Gov. Bobby Jindal for coastal affairs.

Fishermen from the Florida panhandle echoed those sentiments, telling the AP that the fish they catch don’t look the same as they did pre-spill. “It’s not OK at all. We aren’t scientists or anything, but we are out there all the time and we can tell things aren’t right,” said one, who added that many species caught off the beach pier “have oily deposits in their intestines when they are carved up for cleaning.”

Coast Guard reps said that cleanup will remain ongoing in especially sensitive areas but, for most of the gulf, cleanup will now move to the next phase: restoration. Edward Owens, a technical adviser for BP, compared the next phase to getting a “nice shine on your car,” but environmental advocates would likely disagree.

Writes the AP:

A bit more oil will be allowed to remain on remote wild beaches where intense cleanup could do more damage. On beaches where people live and play, BP will be off the hook once there is no visible oil or oil is “as low as reasonably practicable” to clean up.

Marshes will be deemed clean when there is no thick oil left or when officials decide that it’s best to let nature clean up the mess.

As previously reported by The Florida Independent, sightings of a large volume of oil were reported as recently as September. According to the Coast Guard, the recent sheen is likely a result of last year’s spill — and may be emanating from a riser pipe of the Transocean rig, whose explosion led to last year’s disaster. (That rig now sits on the ocean floor.)

According to a press release, the strategy “builds upon on-going efforts underway in the Gulf Coast states includes specific steps for on-the-ground action and represents the Task Force’s commitment to putting Gulf coastal restoration on an equal footing with other national priorities.”

“Even before last year’s oil spill, the Gulf of Mexico endured decades of decline that threatened the environmental and economic health of this region. This strategy is designed to prepare the region for transitioning from a response to the spill into a long-term recovery that supports the vital ecosystem and the people who depend on it,” said EPA Administrator Lis Jackson, who chairs the task force. “The health of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem starts and ends with its people and its communities. The individuals and families who visit the Gulf, who work in the region, who depend on its resources, and especially those who call it home, know its needs and challenges best. They will be integral to creating and executing this long-term strategy.”

Among the major initiatives put forth in the strategy are stopping the loss of wetlands, reducing the flow of nutrients into the gulf and enhancing resilience among coastal communities.

“Today’s release of this important report is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of collaboration and hard work to identify priorities and a strategy to improve, restore and protect the fragile and vital Gulf ecosystem,” said Mimi Drew, Florida’s representative on the task force. “The Gulf of Mexico provides huge environmental and economic benefits to Florida and we look forward to input from the public to refine this plan.”

The explosion of BP’s Transocean rig brought about the worst oil spill in the history of the country, with an estimated 53,000 barrels per day flowing into the gulf for three months in 2010. Though the well was capped in July 2010, the damage continues today. A newly documented oil slick in the area, which some estimate is more than 10 miles long, might be the result of the sunken rig, according to information released by the U.S. Coast Guard.

Sightings of a very large sheen of oil in the Gulf of Mexico have had coastal residents and fishermen worried for over a month. But in a statement issued yesterday, the Coast Guard says the sheen is not from BP’s now-capped Macondo well, which caused harm to both Florida’s environment and economy last year.

Though the Coast Guard said video footage of BP’s Macondo well shows no new leakage, the company hasn’t been ruled out as a source of the sheen. In its statement, the Coast Guard floats the possibility that oil may be emanating from a riser pipe of the Transocean rig, whose explosion led to last year’s disaster. (That rig now sits on the ocean floor.)

As previously reported by The Florida Independent, chemists with Louisiana State University have said that recent samples of the oil bear a striking similarity to the chemical footprint of last year’s oil.

A spokesman for Transocean told the Wall Street Journal that the Coast Guard had notified the company, and that it is “committed” to investigate the reports.

“If a volume of oil has remained in the riser, there is no question that it is oil from BP’s Macondo well,” Transocean spokesman Brian Kennedy told the Journal. “As owner and operator, BP is the responsible party for all fluids that emanated from the Macondo well head, and BP has repeatedly acknowledged that responsibility.”

The explosion of BP’s Transocean rig led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history — killing 11 oil rig workers and releasing massive amounts of oil into the gulf and onto the shores of Florida, Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

Though the theories are un-comfirmed by BP, many worry that the oil might be the result of yet another BP spill. Several samples collected by the Mobile Press-Register in late August bore the same chemical footprint of the Deepwater Horizon oil, according to chemists with Louisiana State University. But BP executives have reported finding no leaks in the seal on the Deepwater Horizon well or the relief well, after a survey by a submersible robot.

A concentrated oil burn in the Gulf of Mexico, conducted in May 2010 (Pic by Deepwater Horizon Response, via Flickr) 

On April 20, 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded — killing 11 oil workers and injuring 17 others. The resulting spill, which took almost three months to be capped, caused severe damage to the environment and economies of coastal communities in the five Gulf Coast states.

Progress Florida’s SpillBabySpill.com — a site initially set up after last year’s disaster — has been reporting extensively on the new oil.

Progress Florida Executive Director Mark Ferrulo says the denials by BP are “eerily reminiscent of the early stages of the first BP oil gusher disaster.”

“The problem is that, if BP is our only source of factual information, then we’re in trouble,” says Ferrulo. “Because they have a history — not only with the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, but with other disasters — of not being honest to the general public.”

The oil was first spotted during an August flyover by the nonprofit group On Wings of Care. The group was conducting a survey of whale sharks — but instead turned up the enormous oil slick. In an Aug. 26 press release, BP maintained that there was “no release of oil from the Macondo well.” (Other rumors have circulated that BP has hired a fleet of 40 shrimping boats to skim oil from the area. BP has denied those rumors.)

Interestingly, the pilot who conducted the initial flyover notified both NOAA and the U.S. Coast Guard, and was told that NOAA was currently sampling the oil for BP.

During On Wings of Care’s most recent flyover, which occurred on Sept. 10, the oil slick was still clearly visible and was spotted in the same general area as the initial flyover. But following its own recent flyover, the Coast Guard said it didn’t spot any oil.

“It’s been really strange and discomforting,” says Progress Florida’s Mark Ferrulo. “These [On Wings of Care] pilots were literally fling over a 10-mile long mile slick, and yet the Coast Guard said they couldn’t find it. Their video goes for nine minutes — without any repeats. And BP says it isn’t there, but there is a BP research ship in the vicinity.”

SkyTruth, a group that analyzes NOAA and NASA satellite imagery, has published its own reports alleging that there is indeed some sort of ongoing potential leak in the area.

“The only real conclusive, without-any-doubt thing could be some time of video imagery,” says Ferrulo. “Until we get that, the speculation will remain.”

In a related story, fresh tar balls have recently begun washing up on the shores of Alabama, following rough waters brought on by Tropical Storm Lee. Though BP has not yet said whether the tar balls are the result of a recent spill (or even last year’s spill), contractors for the company are removing them anyway.

This first volume of the report, coming in at a hefty 288 pages, including appendices, is the result of a year-long investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and looks mainly at the causes and immediate effects of the explosion, rather than the enduring environmental consequences of around 200 million gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf.

The report knocks a lack of proper oversight from the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Micronesian island chain under whose flag the Deepwater Horizon operated, as well as the fact that firefighting efforts were overly focused on search and rescue rather than actually putting out the fire on the site. However, it reserves its strongest condemnation for Transocean, the company that owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon oil rig under contract with BP.

The JIT’s findings are in stark contrast with Transocean’s own annual report, which crowed that 2010 was “the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”

Ultimately, the JIT report concludes:

Although the events leading to the sinking of DEEPWATER HORIZON were set into motion by the failure to prevent a well blowout, the investigation revealed numerous systems deficiencies, and acts and omissions by Transocean and its DEEPWATER HORIZON crew, that had an adverse impact on the ability to prevent or limit the magnitude of the disaster. These included poor maintenance of electrical equipment that may have ignited the explosion, bypassing of gas alarms and automatic shutdown systems that could prevent an explosion, and lack of training of personnel on when and how to shutdown engines and disconnect the MODU [Mobile Offshore Drilling Unit] from the well to avoid a gas explosion and mitigate the damage from an explosion and fire. These deficiencies indicate that Transocean’s failure to have an effective safety management system and instill a culture that emphasizes and ensures safety contributed to this disaster.

Over the course of its 130 pages of non-appendix content, the report goes into greater detail on all points. It highlights the company’s failure to prepare for the possibility of the rig sinking and points out five distinct actions undertaken in the critical initial hours of the disaster that contributed to total system failure.

More significantly, the report provides several major areas of Transocean policy and practice that led to the total failure of the rig. Among them:

• Several maintenance audits, including one performed just weeks before the disaster, found Transocean was not doing its job in monitoring and maintaining conditions on Deepwater Horizon and other vessels.
• Deepwater Horizon had two separate system failures in the summer of 2008 that were never investigated.
• Transocean had no system to communicate emergencies across all workers on the rig.
• Deepwater Horizon’s management and crew were ill trained in disaster preparedness. Just 63 percent of the crew had even gone through safety training prior to the explosion.

In a later section, the JIT indicts the corporate culture within Transocean:

Transocean also did not create a climate conducive to such analysis and reporting of safety concerns. In March 2010, Transocean hired Lloyd’s Register, a classification society, to conduct a SMS Culture/Climate Review which included auditors conducting surveys at Transocean offices and vessels over a two week period. The results indicated that “a significant proportion (43.6%) of the personnel participating in the perception survey reported that they worked with a fear of reprisal if a casualty or near miss occurred. This issue is strongly related to the company’s casualty investigation process, which nearly 40% of the participants believed was applied to apportion blame.”

At a company where employees fear reprisal for whatever reason and when there are significant costs associated with any unscheduled shutdown or delay of drilling activities, it is unlikely that the crew would report safety issues even if it identified risks.

The report goes on to detail eight pages of “Examples of Transocean’s Non-compliance with the International Safety Management Code” in an appendix. Volumes II through V of the report are scheduled to be released by July.

President Obama is updated on the oil spill response in New Orleans in June. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama’s May directive to triple the number of people working to stop the Gulf oil spill may have actually hindered the government’s response. The Coast Guard, in the days after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion, kept track of the government’s response to the spill on a “simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.” The White House denied a request by government scientists in the weeks after the spill to release worst-case oil flow rate scenarios to the public.

These are just three of the many revelations included in four draft reports released today by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which Obama established in May. The reports, which the commission notes are subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the commissioners, paint one of the most detailed pictures of the federal government’s response to the oil spill. And it’s not pretty.

[Environment1] The reports say the Obama administration was not prepared for a spill the size of the one in the Gulf, which spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. They detail the many stops and starts of the Unified Command, which was set up to organize response efforts. And they suggest that the administration sought desperately to keep the oil spill from becoming for Obama what Hurricane Katrina was for George Bush.

The initial response to the spill — the first nine days — was marked by a sense of “over-optimism.” According to one report, “Responders almost uniformly noted that, while they understood that they were facing a major spill, they believed that BP would get the well under control.”

But it’s unclear what impact this over-optimism had on the response. “While it is not clear that this misplaced optimism affected any individual response effort, it may have affected the scale and speed with which national resources were brought to bear,” one oil spill commission report says. “In hindsight, some Coast Guard responders thought that their initial approach was too slow and unfocused.” The report notes however that despite the slow initial response, by mid-June the Coast Guard was “fighting a war against the oil.”

While the National Contingency Plan, the document that lays out how to contain and respond to an oil spill, was adequate in some respects, the report says, “In other respects, the plan was inadequate to handle the scale of the spill — its magnitude, duration, and effects on many stakeholders.”

At the same time, efforts by President Obama and the White House to shape the way Americans saw the government’s response may have complicated the effort. Responding to polls that suggested the American people believed the federal government was not adequately dealing with the situation in the Gulf, President Obama announced in May that he would triple oil spill response resources. That decision, one report says, may have actually hindered the government’s response to the spill.

According to the report, the Obama directive may have confused the spill response by throwing more manpower at an already complicated operation.

“Responders noted that “tripling” taxed the Coast Guard’s ability to respond and to conduct its other missions and may not have been the most effective use of a thin-spread force in a lengthy campaign,” the report says. “Tripling, or at least the arguable overreaction to the public perception of a slow response, resulted in resources being thrown at the spill in general rather than being targeted in an efficient way.”

The reports also raise significant questions about the process the government used to determine just how much oil was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. One report says BP’s initial estimate that 1,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking out of the well was essentially pulled out of thin air.

“Neither the Coast Guard nor BP divulged the data or methodology behind this estimate,” the report says. “Based on the information we have to date, it appears the figure came from BP without supporting documentation.”

What’s more, when the Coast Guard later upped the estimate to 5,000 barrels per day days, it based that figure on an unsolicited letter from a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who had no expertise in making such estimates.

Despite these estimates, government officials responded to the spill based on worst-case-scenario flow rates. Those estimates changed over time, but were significantly higher than the figures the Coast Guard gave to the public.

The oil spill commission’s report suggests that the federal government kept key information from the public in the weeks after the spill, with the White House in at least one case rejecting a request by government scientists to reveal to the public worst-case-scenario flow rate data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a key agency involved in the spill response, wanted to release some of the worst-case discharge figures in the weeks after the spill but the White House Office of Management and Budget denied its request.

The lack of information could have fueled distrust of the government’s response to the spill. At the same time, the response “may have benefited from a greater sense of urgency” in the first days after the spill, which could have come about if the worst-case scenarios were released publicly, the report says.

The White House, in a statement e-mailed to reporters today, said it did release information about the worst-case-scenario flow rate. In May, administration officials said the worst-case scenario could be a release of more than 100,000 barrels a day.

“The federal government response was full force and immediate, and the response focused on state and local plans and evolved when needed,” the White House statement said.

The reports also take aim at the administration’s so-called “Oil Budget,” a much-criticized August assessment of the spill put together by the Obama administration. The document was only meant to be used for “operational” purposes, according to the report, not as a public document that would lay out the “fate of oil” in the Gulf, as the Obama administration would later frame it.

The Oil Budget, which was put together by the Coast Guard’s Oil Budget Calculator Science and Engineering Team, was released on Aug. 4. It gave the first estimate of the amount of oil that spilled into the Gulf, about 4.9 million barrels. But it also obscured what had happened to the oil that spilled into the Gulf by failing to take into account biodegradation — or as the commission’s report says, “the exact amounts of remaining, dissolved, and dispersed oil.”

The spill commission’s report places much of the blame for mischaracterizations of the Oil Budget on White House climate and energy policy coordinator Carol Browner, who exaggerated the Oil Budget’s findings in television interviews. “Ms. Browner did not describe the Oil Budget as an operational tool designed to assist responders,” the report says. “Instead, some of her statements presented the budget as a scientific assessment of how much of the oil was ‘gone.’”

The Oil Budget was not peer reviewed, the report finds. “The criticism that the Oil Budget was not a peer-reviewed scientific report was accurate. Even the independent scientists that were described as peer reviewers were critical of the report and the way it was presented,” the report says.

While scientists were consulted on the Oil Budget, those same scientists took issue with the way the document was characterized by the administration in interviews with oil spill commission staff. Still, the spill commission’s report was not able to analyze the assumptions used in the Oil Budget because the Obama administration refuses to make them public until it completes a comprehensive report on the spill this month.

Another report focuses on the administration’s use of chemical dispersants to break up oil and keep it from hitting shore. The federal government was not prepared to determine how chemical dispersants should be used to break up oil in the event of a massive oil spill, a draft report released today by the the national oil spill commission says.

According to the report, the Environmental Protection Agency and NOAA — two federal agencies that played a major role in the oil spill response — never considered the possibility that a major spill would require such large quantities of dispersant. Though the spill was unprecedented, the oil spill commission does not excuse EPA’s lack of preparation. “The oil and gas industry has been extracting high volumes of oil from reservoirs in the Gulf for twenty years,” the report says. “This is not a new, unanticipated development. Nor is deepwater drilling.”

The report says it is “too early to assess” whether the Obama administration made the right choice in using such massive amounts of chemical dispersant. But the report does lay out a number of “uncertainties” about the benefits of dispersant use, including its impact on marine life.

The draft reports, released today, were put together by staff for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The reports, according to the commission, are “preliminary, subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the views either of the commission as a whole or any of its members.” The reports are based in part on confidential interviews with key players in the oil spill response.

According to the report, which was today released in conjunction with three other draft staff reports by the spill commission, the Obama directive may have actually confused the spill response, throwing more manpower at an already complicated operation.

The report says:

Responders noted that “tripling” taxed the Coast Guard’s ability to respond and to conduct its other missions and may not have been the most effective use of a thin-spread force in a lengthy campaign. Tripling, or at least the arguable overreaction to the public perception of a slow response, resulted in resources being thrown at the spill in general rather than being targeted in an efficient way.

The Obama directive is just one example contained in today’s report, which give the federal government mixed reviews on its efforts to contain the massive Gulf oil spill. “In some respects, the response effectively implemented the provisions of the [National Contingency Plan] and helped to mitigate the most serious negative impacts of the spill,” the oil spill commission report says. “In other respects, the plan was inadequate to handle the scale of the spill—its magnitude, duration, and effects on many stakeholders.”

The initial response to the spill — the first nine days — was marked by a sense of “over-optimism,” the report says.

Responders almost uniformly noted that, while they understood that they were facing a major spill, they believed that BP would get the well under control. At least one high evel Coast Guard official thought that the oil would not come ashore and hesitated to open additional command posts. Responders viewed the event as an “incident” rather than a “campaign,” which is what it became.

But it’s unclear what impact this over-optimism had on the response. “While it is not clear that this misplaced optimism affected any individual response effort, it may have affected the scale and speed with which national resources were brought to bear,” the oil spill commission report says. “In hindsight, some Coast Guard responders thought that their initial approach was too slow and unfocused.” The report notes however that despite the slow initial response, by mid-June the Coast Guard was “fighting a war against the oil.”

On BP’s involvement in the response, the report suggests that the oil giant may have, in some cases, had more control than the federal government.

The report says:

The organizational charts from the Unified Area Command and the Incident Command Posts show BP employees scattered through the command structure, in roles ranging from waste management to environmental assessment. In some command chains, a BP employee was at the top and a Coast Guard member would report up to the BP employee.

The Coast Guard, in the days after the April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion, kept track of the government’s response to the spill on a “simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.” As the full picture of the spill emerged, the Coast Guard decided it needed a better way to keep track of the oil that was gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

Thus, the “Oil Budget,” as it would later become known, was born. But the document was only meant to be used for “operational” purposes, according to the report, not as a public document that would lay out the “fate of oil” in the Gulf, as the Obama administration would later frame it.

According to the commission’s report:

The Oil Budget was never meant to be a precise tool, and its rollout as a scientific report obscured some important shortcomings.

The Oil Budget, which was put together by the Coast Guard’s Oil Budget Calculator Science and Engineering Team, was released on Aug. 4. It gave the first estimate of the amount of oil that spilled into the Gulf, about 4.9 million barrels. But it also obscured what had happened to the oil that spilled into the Gulf by failing to take into account biodegradation — or as the commission’s report says, “the exact amounts of remaining, dissolved, and dispersed oil.”

From today’s report:

The Oil Budget’s failure to account for biodegradation could result in over- or under- estimation of the amount of oil remaining in Gulf waters. On the one hand, oil that the budget classified as “dispersed,” “dissolved,” or “evaporated” is not necessarily gone. Dispersed or dissolved oil may still be present in the water, and even evaporated oil remains in the atmosphere for a short time. … On the other hand, oil that the budget classified as “remaining” is not necessarily still present, as some portion may have already biodegraded.

The spill commission’s report places much of the blame for mischaracterizations of the Oil Budget on White House climate and energy policy coordinator Carol Browner, who exaggerated the Oil Budget’s findings in television interviews.

The report says:

Ms. Browner did not describe the Oil Budget as an operational tool designed to assist responders. Instead, some of her statements presented the budget as a scientific assessment of how much of the oil was “gone”….

In addition, Ms. Browner and [National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco] emphasized that the report was “peer-review[ed]” by federal and non-federal scientists. These references to peer review by two senior officials in a White House press briefing likely contributed to public perception of the budget?s findings as more exact and complete than the budget, as an operational tool, was designed to be.

The Oil Budget was not peer reviewed, the report finds. “The criticism that the Oil Budget was not a peer-reviewed scientific report was accurate. Even the independent scientists that were described as peer reviewers were critical of the report and the way it was presented,” the report says.

While scientists were consulted on the Oil Budget, those same scientists took issue with the way the document was characterized by the administration in interviews with oil spill commission staff.

According to the report:

When interviewed, many of these scientists described their contributions in similar terms, but they emphasized the large degree of uncertainty in their work and their impression that they were assisting in the development of an operational tool rather than a public government report. Indeed, it is unclear whether any of the independent scientists actually reviewed the final report prior to its release. In the words of consulting expert Ed Overton, “[t]o a scientist, peer review means something . . . . Clearly it wasn’t a peer review from a scientific perspective.”

Still, the spill commission’s report was not able to analyze the assumptions used in the Oil Budget because the Obama administration refuses to make them public until it completes a comprehensive report on the spill this month.

The commission’s report was released in conjunction with three other reports on the oil spill. The draft reports, released today, were put together by staff for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The reports, according to the commission, are “preliminary, subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the views either of the commission as a whole or any of its members.” The reports are based in part on confidential interviews with key players in the oil spill response.

One report, “The Amount and Fate of the Oil Spill,” offers many new details on how the government and BP estimated the size of the oil spill in the weeks after the Deepwater Horizon explosion. It suggests that the federal government kept key information from the public in the weeks after the spill, with the White House in at least one case rejecting a request by government scientists to reveal to the public worst-case scenario flow rate data.

The report says BP’s initial estimate that 1,000 barrels of oil per day were leaking out of the well was essentially pulled out of thin air.

According to the report:

Neither the Coast Guard nor BP divulged the data or methodology behind this estimate. Based on the information we have to date, it appears the figure came from BP without supporting documentation.

What’s more, when the Coast Guard upped the estimate to 5,000 barrels per day days later, it based that figure on an unsolicited letter from a scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who had no expertise in making such estimates:

The NOAA scientist’s 5,000 bbls/day estimate did not take into account the kink leak, and his methodology for estimating the velocity of the leaking oil was imprecise. Further, there is no indication that the scientist had expertise in estimating deep-sea flow velocity from video data or that he used an established or peer-reviewed methodology when doing so. This is not a criticism of the scientist, who made clear his assumptions and that the 5,000 bbls/day figure was a “very rough estimate.” His stated intent in disseminating the estimate was to warn government officials that the flow rate was multiple times greater than 1,000 bbls/day.

Despite the acknowledged inaccuracies of the NOAA scientist?s estimate, and despite the existence of other and potentially better methodologies for visually assessing flow rate (discussed below), 5,000 bbls/day was to remain the government?s official flow-rate estimate for a full month, until May 27, 2010.

Despite these estimates, government officials were dealing with the spill based on a worst-case scenario flow-rate, which they refused to disclose to the public. That rate changed over time, but was significantly higher than the estimate the Coast Guard gave to the public. Days after the spill, government officials estimated the worst-case scenario flow rate to be 162,000 barrels per day. That figure would be lowered significantly over time.

The report says:

But despite the fact that the Unified Command had this information, relied on it for operations, and publicly stated that it was operating under a worst- case scenario, the government never disclosed what its operational scenario was.

In addition, the report says that NOAA wanted to release some of the worst-case discharge figures in the weeks after the spill, but the White House Office of Management and Budget denied its request.

In conclusion, the report says the lack of information could have fueled distrust of the government’s response to the spill. At the same time, the response “may have benefited from a greater sense of urgency” in the first days after the spill, which could have come about if the worst-case scenarios were released publicly.

The report says:

Putting aside the question of whether the public had a right to know the worst-case discharge figures, disclosure of those estimates, and explanation of their role in guiding the government effort, may have improved public confidence in the response. Instead, government officials attempted to assure the public that they were not basing operations on the official flow-rate estimates, while not stating what they were basing operations on instead. That lack of information may have contributed to public skepticism about whether the government appreciated the size of the Deepwater Horizon spill and was truly bringing all of its resources to bear. Moreover, the national response may have benefited early on from a greater sense of urgency, which public discussion of worst-case discharge figures may have generated.

The draft reports, released today, were put together by staff for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. The reports, according to the commission, are “preliminary, subject to change and do not necessarily reflect the views either of the commission as a whole or any of its members.” The reports are based in part on confidential interviews with key players in the oil spill response.

The Interior Department and the Coast Guard are holding hearings this week on the cause of the BP oil spill. But they aren’t getting many answers. All week long, the three companies responsible for the spill: BP (well owner), Transocean (rig owner) and Halliburton (cement contractor) engaged in a round robin of finger pointing. There was so much ducking of responsibility that a chairman of the oil spill hearings said he did not yet know who was in charge of the rig prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, The New York Times reports:

This week, BP has been pushing back against the perception that it is primarily responsible for the spill. On Wednesday, the company issued a statement saying that Halliburton should have stopped work on cementing the well if its workers held genuine safety concerns. To not do so, BP said, would be “morally repugnant.”

Halliburton replied with a statement that said BP had ignored its warnings and persisted with a risky plan to use fewer devices called centralizers when cementing the well. “Ultimately, Halliburton acted on the decisions of and at the explicit direction of the well owner,” the statement said.

The dispute follows testimony Tuesday about a report from Halliburton to BP two days before the explosion that said the cement could result in a “severe gas flow” problem.