Feds failed to conduct one-third of required inspections on Gulf Deepwater oil rig

LOS ANGELES (MCT) — Federal inspectors failed to conduct nearly one-third of required inspections on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the 28 months before it exploded and sank in the Gulf, according to government records.

The inspections that were carried out by the Minerals Management Service found no sign of trouble on BP's Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to documents posted Friday on the Interior Department's website.

MMS reports, including one dated three weeks before the deadly April 20 explosion, indicate that the rig's blowout preventer was functioning properly, and they make no mention of any persistent problems with surges of natural gas, or "kicks," flowing up through the well and disrupting drilling.

Although the cause of the disaster remains under investigation, experts have blamed the explosion on a natural gas surge. A prominent outside investigator, University of California, Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea, said last month that rig workers told him that the Deepwater Horizon battled repeated kicks in the weeks leading up to its sinking. MMS inspectors noted the presence of a kick in October 2008, but never after.

"It appears that the Deepwater Horizon experienced dangerous gas 'kicks' before the April 20 disaster," said David Pettit, a senior attorney and drilling expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who reviewed the inspection reports Friday. "It is hard to understand why MMS did not learn about this potentially deadly problem" before the accident.

Despite federal regulations mandating that inspections be done monthly, the rig operation was only inspected three times over the first four months of this year; nine times in 2009 and six times in 2008. Officials at Interior, which houses MMS, say rigs can miss inspections because they're on the move or due to weather conditions.

Interior officials declined to answer questions about the documents and released a statement, saying that several investigations underway "have been charged with looking at all the questions related to the Deepwater Horizon explosion and BP oil spill. These questions will be best addressed in the context of those investigations."

The documents indicate that the last time the Horizon was flagged for a safety violation was in 2007, when an inspector found a pressure washer was not properly grounded on the rig floor. Correspondence posted along with the reports show that BP unsuccessfully fought that citation.