US Oil Spill Report

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In a 48-page report, the presidential commission wrote that the failures were "systemic" and likely to recur without industry and government reform.  The new report criticises BP, which owned the Macondo well, Transocean and Halliburton, which managed the well-sealing operation, and blames inadequate government oversight and regulation.

This was one of the worst cases in history when last April 11 people were killed on the Deepwater Horizon rig killed.

a small plane flying over rust-colored "streamers" of crude oil

The Macondo well, gushed millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico from April to July.  Hundreds of miles of coastline were affected causing serious marine and environmental damage which will take years to correct.

BP said in a statement that the report, like its own investigation, had found the accident was the result of multiple causes, involving multiple companies.

But, 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".

The new report identifies specific risks:

• A flawed design for the cement used to seal the bottom of the well
• A test of that seal identified problems but was "incorrectly judged a success"
• The workers' failure to recognise the first signs of the impending blow-out

Transocean, which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, said that "the procedures being conducted in the final hours were crafted and directed by BP engineers and approved in advance by federal regulators".

"Whether purposeful or not, many of the decisions that BP, Halliburton, and Transocean made that increased the risk of the Macondo blow-out clearly saved those companies significant time (and money)," the presidential panel wrote.

"BP did not have adequate controls in place to ensure that key decisions in the months leading up to the blow-out were safe or sound from an engineering perspective."

Don Boesch, a member of the investigating commission said they had identified "a whole sequence of poor decisions with unfortunate consequences when put together".

He said that not all the faults lay with BP, although the company did have overall responsibility.

Mr Boesch said government regulators are also criticised in the report.

"What we found was very limited oversight of these various activities and decisions, that the agency responsible in the Department of the Interior was understaffed, [and] didn't have the inspectors and technical analysts who were up to the task fully."

The conclusions run counter to industry efforts to portray the Deepwater Horizon disaster as a rare occurrence, as oil companies prod the US government to open greater areas of the US coast to oil exploration.