Congress grills executives on oil spill

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Congress called BP and its drilling partners to account Tuesday for a “cascade of failures” behind the spreading Gulf oil spill, zeroing in on a crucial chain of events at the deep-sea wellhead just before an explosion consumed the rig and set off the catastrophic rupture.

In back-to-back Senate inquiries, executives of the three companies at the heart of the massive spill were chastised by senators over attempts to shift the blame to one another.

BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives sat shoulder to shoulder. Each company defended its own operations and raised questions about its partners in the project gone awry.

Lawmakers compared the calamity to some of history’s most notorious mishaps in the first congressional inquiry into the April 20 explosion and so-far unstoppable spill.

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