The Department of Interior issued a report on Wednesday determining that a potentially unsafe oil rig operating in the Gulf of Mexico had in fact passed recent safety inspections.
In what was a delayed response to a request for information, the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) released findings showing that Seadrill Limited -- the company behind a damaging oil spill off the coast of Australia last fall -- had environmental violations with their operations in the Gulf but nothing else.
"The things that were found here, none were related to safety," Walter Cruickshank, Deputy Director of the Minerals Management Service, told the Huffington Post. "The major issues were related to pollution, some drilling mud spilling. But the basic safety equipment all passed the inspections."
"We are not making any editorial comment on the findings," Cruickshank added. "It is a factual review of what is found in these inspections and you can see what was found. And the violations have to do with pollution as opposed to safety issue."
The findings are a potential relief for those concerned about another Gulf area oil spill along the lines of what has taken place with the rig owned by Transocean Ltd and leased to BP this past week. Last fall, Seadrill came under some political heat after one of its rigs caused an oil spill off the western coast of Australian that lasted ten weeks.
But as Cruickshank acknowledged, the just-released findings aren't a complete passing grade. The Transocean rig used by BP had safety ratings that "were better than average" prior to the late April incident. The environmental violations at the Seadrill rig, moreover, are cause for concern.
The MMS inspection was at the behest of Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) a fierce critic of offshore drilling. The New Jersey Democrat sent a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in late November following the Seadrill spill in Australia, requesting that the department look into the company's operations in the Gulf. Salazar initially had pledged to "have a report by the end of February 2010." But it never came, prompting Menendez to request information from the department once more, this time just days before the rig leased by BP exploded.
"There was a similar massive oil spill along the coast of Australia just last year that should have been a wake-up call," Menendez said in a statement to the Huffington Post before the MMS report was released. "Now that the [BP] disaster is threatening our own communities and local economies, I think people understand that a 'Too Safe to Fail' rig doesn't exist. I hope this will spur an investigation of SeaDrill, Transocean and other rig operators soon."
Interior sent its letter a few days later. The reason for the delay, officials say, is because the department had to go back and gather old inspections on Seadrill in addition to finalizing a separate inspection on April 28.
"The recent accident of the Deepwater Horizon off the coast of Louisiana reminds us that even a highly regulated industry is not, unfortunately, immune to accidents," wrote S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, director of MMS, in her letter to Menendez. "We will be working with other Federal Agencies, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, to fully investigate this accident and look for ways to improve our regulations."
Here are the results of MMS's findings:
Here is the letter to Menendez: