Star One Smart Blog's

Live Feed of the leak at the riser on the ocean floor (live until BP shuts it down ).

FOX News (among others) has reported on a House memo (a Waxman committee) stating the BP likely had ample warning that methane gas was building up in their well, and might cause a blowout. They decided to use seawater instead of mud to plug the pipe (before disconnecting the rig and moving on); that proving to be a fatal mistake. Remember, there were BP executives on the rig, 'managing' «cough»dancing a celebratory jig«cough» the final setup; likely they had advance notice that BP had won, or was a finalist for, the Interior Department's MMS 'Safety' award. Perhaps someone had no desire to pull the plug on the party by announcing a possible screwup, decided to ignore data, and allowed complacency to doom the operation. Meanwhile, the screwup announced itself on April 20; two days later, the rig was sunk by the Coast Guard, possibly causing the break in the pipe at the ocean floor.

Again, this is preliminary speculation. Fingers will point for decades on this one (remember the Exxon Valdez? Finally the skipper was blamed, for being a drunk).

Oil giant BP PLC told congressional investigators that a decision to continue work on an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a test warned that something was wrong may have been a "fundamental mistake," according to a memo released by two lawmakers Tuesday.

The document describes a wide array of mistakes in the fateful final hours aboard the Deepwater Horizon—but the main revelation is that BP now says there was a clear warning sign of a "very large abnormality" in the well, but work proceeded anyway.

The rig exploded about two hours later.

The congressional memo outlines what the lawmakers say was a briefing for congressional staff by BP officials early Tuesday. Company representatives provided a preliminary report on their internal investigation of the April 20 disaster, which killed 11 workers and continues to spill thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new developments come as President Barack Obama, working to tame a political storm over the spill, is expected to announce Thursday that the government will impose tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections on off-shore drilling operations.

More than 200,000 gallons of oil a day are spewing from the blown-out well at the site of the Deepwater Horizon, which exploded April 20 and sank two days later. Meanwhile, concern grows about animals and plants on the ecologically fragile coastline, where oil began washing ashore April 29.

According to the memo, BP identified several other mistakes aboard the rig, including possible contamination of the cement meant to seal off the well from volatile natural gas and the apparent failure to monitor the well closely for signs that gas was leaking in, the congressmen wrote in their post-meeting memo. An immense column of natural gas, erupting from the oil well, fueled the fireball that destroyed the rig.

A BP spokesman declined to comment on the memo's specific statements. He said the company had identified "what we believe to be a series of underlying failures" that caused the accident.

Although the memo identifies some of the problems that led to these mistakes, it doesn't identify who made the key decisions. Most of the work aboard the rig was performed by employees of Transocean Ltd., the rig's owner and operator, and other contractors, but BP had managers
aboard the rig to supervise the work at the time of the accident.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama wakes up to a new day. Got valium ?

Photo: BP Deep Horizon fire, 4/21/2010 (Coast Guard)