A request by BP to set an "unusually deep cement plug" on the Gulf oil well that subsequently exploded killing 11 people was approved by the then-Minerals Management Service in just 90 minutes, according to a presidential commission report on the disaster.
That decision was one of the nine technical and engineering calls that the commission says — in a 48-page excerpt of its final report obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press — increased the risk of a blowout.
The oil spill commission said a string of poor decisions led to technical problems that contributed to the deadly April 20 accident, which led to more than 200 million gallons of oil spewing from BP's well a mile beneath the Gulf of Mexico.
"The blowout was not the product of a series of abberational decisions made by a rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again," the commission concluded.
"Rather, the root causes are systemic, and absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur," it added.
BP hired the firm Halliburton to seal the Gulf well with a temporary cement plug after the exploratory rig found oil. A number of tests on the cement were carried out in the weeks running up to the disaster.
In October, a government panel said Halliburton had used flawed material to cement the well and knew that it was unstable.
In response to that finding, Halliburton vigorously defended its actions and said BP was responsible for the disaster because it did not perform a key test to determine the integrity of the cement work.
However, that it had skipped doing a test on the final formulation of cement.
Four out of 13 preliminary conclusions noted problems relating to the cement plug. Cement is an essential barrier to preventing blowouts.
The disaster prompted the Obama administration to introduce a moratorium on deepwater drilling.
In mile-deep seas, . The water pressure is enough to crush a submarine and the explosive methane gas that likely ignited on the Deepwater Horizon can be much more damaging if not properly controlled.
In the intense pressure and cold of the deep, methane hydrates exist in a slushy, crystalline form. But as methane rockets upward in a blowout, passing into lower-pressure zones, it converts to a gaseous state and gains tremendous force.
The use of heat in cementing, or sealing a well, which was under way prior to the blast, can destabilize methane hydrates at extreme depths.
Halliburton acknowledged as much in an industry presentation in 2009, calling the risks "a challenge to the safety and economics."
Interior Department spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff said the presidential commission's report focused on areas in which the agency in charge of offshore drilling has already made improvements.
"The agency has taken unprecedented steps and will continue to make the changes necessary to restore the American people's confidence in the safety and environmental soundness of oil and gas drilling and production on the Outer Continental Shelf, while balancing our nation's important energy needs," Barkoff said in a statement.
Share prices rise
The report already has the companies involved with the blown-out well and Deepwater Horizon rig pointing fingers at each other again.
However, it did not appear to be affecting their market value with London-listed shares in BP trading up 1.3 percent at 506 pence at 3:07 a.m. ET Thursday and those in Swiss-based Transocean up 2.3 percent.
BP, in a statement issued Wednesday, said the report, like its own investigation, found the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies.
It said the company was working with regulators "to ensure the lessons learned from Macondo lead to improvements in operations and contractor services in deepwater drilling."
Transocean Ltd., which owned the rig being leased by BP to perform the drilling, said in response to the commission's findings that "the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators."
And Halliburton also said it acted at the direction of BP and was "fully indemnified by BP."
The commission underscores its central conclusion with a quote from an e-mail written by BP engineer Brett Cocales on April 16, just days before the disaster.
The e-mail was first unearthed in an investigation conducted by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who at the time led the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
"But, who cares, it's done, end of story, will probably be fine and we'll get a good cement job," Cocales wrote, after he disagreed with BP's decision to use fewer centralizers than recommended.
Centralizers are used to center the pipe to ensure a good cement job. The cement failed at the bottom of the Macondo well, allowing oil and gas to enter it, according to investigations.
The full report is due to the president Jan. 11.
Key questions
But key questions will remain, namely: Why didn't a hulking piece of equipment that sat at the wellhead and was supposed to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a blowout do its job?
Federal investigators analyzing the blowout preventer at a NASA facility in New Orleans aren't expected to finish until February.
The Justice Department continues its own investigation, as does a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement panel.
BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the three key companies involved with the well and the rig that exploded, each made individual decisions that increased risks of a blowout but saved significant time or money.
But ultimately, the Deepwater Horizon disaster came down to a single failure, the panel says: management. When decisions were made, no one was considering the risk they were taking.
The suggestion that the BP disaster may not be an isolated incident runs counter to assurances by the oil industry, which has worked hard to portray the accident as a rare occurrence.
"This clearly was a rare incident," the president of the American Petroleum Institute, Jack Gerard, said Tuesday when his organization published a new report urging Congress and the Obama administration to open more areas to oil and gas drilling.
Outside experts in technological disasters were split by the report's excerpt.
They lauded the commission's focus on organizational and managerial failures instead of blaming the rig workers. But they were divided whether the panel went far enough in criticizing the companies for taking time- and money-saving shortcuts.
University of California at Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea, who has studied and worked on offshore oil rigs for decades and is an international expert on technological disasters, lauded the panel for "articulating the hows and whys."
"This was a preventable disaster," Bea, who ran a Berkeley investigation into the accident, said.
