The first firm evidence of what likely caused the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil blowout _ a devastating sequence of equipment failures _ drives home a central unsettling point about America's oil industry: key safety features at tens of thousands of U.S. offshore rigs are barely regulated.
Wednesday's hearings by congressional and administration panels _ in Washington and in Louisiana _ laid out a checklist of unseen breakdowns on largely unregulated aspects of well safety that appear to have contributed to the April 20 blowout: a leaky cement job, a loose hydraulic fitting, a dead battery.
The trail of problems highlights the reality that, even as the U.S. …
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