Senators grill execs over Gulf oil spill

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 each other. And they were asked to explain why better preparations had not been made to head off the accident.

"Let me be really clear," Lamar McKay, chairman of BP America, told the hearing. "Liability, blame, fault - put it over here." He said: "Our obligation is to deal with the spill, clean it up and make sure the impacts of that spill are compensated, and we're going to do that."

By "over here," McKay meant the witness table at which BP, Transocean and Halliburton executives sat. But despite his acknowledgment of responsibility, each company defended its own operations and raised questions about its partners in the project gone awry.

Lawmakers compared the April 20 explosion and spill to other notorious mishaps.

Said Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee: "If this is like other catastrophic failures of technological systems in modern history, whether it was the sinking of the Titanic, Three Mile Island, or the loss of the Challenger, we will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures and technical and human and regulatory errors."

The corporate finger pointing drew an admonishment from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that "we are all in this together" in trying to shut off the oil and find a safer way to exploit energy. "This accident has reminded us of a cold reality, that the production of energy will never be without risk or environmental consequence," she said.

Failure to plug the leak was intensifying impatience, from the contaminated Gulf waters to the White House.

"The president is frustrated with everything, the president is frustrated with everybody, in the sense that we still have an oil leak," said spokesman Robert Gibbs. "That includes us, that includes everybody that's involved with this."

A BP spokesman told The Associated Press an oil containment box known as a "top hat" was being brought to the site and undersea robots would position it over the gusher by Thursday.