Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Lord Williamson of Horton Excerpts

Monday 14th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, one of the great things about a debate such as this is that one learns so much. I am very grateful for the noble Lord’s comments on nitrogen flowing from the Mississippi; it is true that we have a very heavily polluted world. As I said earlier, if nothing else, I hope that this will be a massive environmental wake-up call, and I should like to take up the opportunity of meeting the noble Lord’s colleagues.

[Lord Williamson of Horton]

My Lords, perhaps I may take the Minister back to day one for a moment. The cause of this accident was the failure of the blow-out preventer. Do we know whether it was a failure of the equipment, which was owned and provided by Transocean and was therefore the responsibility of that company, or whether it was a failure of the fitting of the blow-out preventer, which I understand was done by Halliburton, as was the concreting? Either the equipment or its fitting failed, and that will be a very important point for the future. I simply ask whether we know that already or whether we have yet to find out.

[Lord Marland]

This morning I met Iain Conn, the chief executive of refining and marketing for BP, who is on the board of BP. He gave me a very clear picture, which has been developing over time. Seven safeguards failed, so it was a most exceptional accident. As the noble Lord rightly said, the concrete casing and the blow-out preventer failed, but another five things should have locked in to prevent that happening. It is remarkable that all those safeguards should have failed. Clearly, the finger of blame will be pointed in all sorts of directions but I do not think that that will help to solve the current problem. We will doubtless be left with the presidential inquiry, which will take place afterwards. Our own OSPRAG group will review that and ensure that lessons are strongly learnt.