WASHINGTON, June 3 (UPI) -- A U.S. oversight committee said Washington was reckless in its decision to let BP take charge of the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill last year.
A report by the U.S. Oversight and Government Reform Committee finds that U.S. President Barack Obama's administration could have managed the response better than it did.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig caught fire and sank in April 2010. The disaster killed 11 workers and resulted in one of the worst oil spills in the history of the industry.
The oversight committee in a 36-page report claimed many problems associated with response to the oil spill occurred under a framework chosen by U.S. officials, including Obama.
"While BP is unquestionably and admittedly responsible for the oil spill, the government's decision to place the perpetrator of a reckless and unnecessary tragedy at the helm of recovery operations was clearly controversial," the report said. "To many spill victims it was also outright offensive and frustrating."
A presidential panel examining last year's Gulf of Mexico oil spill said in January that private industrial and government reforms were needed to prevent another disaster.
The panel in its report found the failure of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico "can be traced to a series of identifiable mistakes made by BP, Halliburton and Transocean that reveal such systematic failures in risk management that they place in doubt the safety culture of the entire industry."
