Just a day before, the Interior Department cited BP, the British oil company, and its two principal contractors for numerous safety and environmental violations related to the explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010.
Michael Bromwich, the head of the new Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, disclosed the decision at a House committee hearing. The committee was reviewing the findings of a government investigation into the BP disaster, which left 11 workers dead and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
“The question is, ‘Do you administer the administrative death penalty based on one incident?’ ” Mr. Bromwich told reporters after the hearing. “And we’ve concluded that’s not appropriate.”
Mr. Bromwich told the House committee that his agency had “thought about this issue quite a lot” before deciding to let BP participate in the first scheduled auction of offshore leases since the accident. Two million deepwater acres will be opened for exploration and drilling in the western gulf.
It was a welcome development for BP, which has been struggling to rebuild its exploration portfolio and remake the company after the accident. On Thursday, it got a second piece of good news closer to home when British authorities gave permission to BP and its partners to proceed with a $7 billion project to develop a large oil field off the Scottish coast.
At the House hearing, Raymond Dempsey Jr., a vice president of BP America, said, “We believe that we have the necessary systems and capabilities in place to continue to enhance the safety of deepwater drilling.”
But the Obama administration’s decision to let BP bid for leases was sharply criticized by environmentalists.
“We think it’s too soon to let BP back in there,” said Athan Manuel, director of lands protection at the Sierra Club. “These guys shouldn’t have the benefit of the doubt anymore.”
In the citations issued Wednesday night against BP, Transocean, the rig operator, and Halliburton, the cement contractor for well, the Interior Department said that the three companies failed to protect safety and the environment. The 15 separate violations could force the companies to pay as much as $45.7 million, but more important, it was the first time the government had moved to punish offshore contractors that take instructions from oil field operators like BP.
The sanctions will probably be small compared with the fines expected to come under the Clean Water Act, which could reach more than $20 billion for BP.
“The fact that there were violations of federal drilling regulations will strengthen the government’s arguments for large penalties under the Clean Water Act,” said David M. Uhlmann, director of the Environmental Law and Policy Program at the University of Michigan Law School and a former federal environmental prosecutor.
But the bigger question is whether the Justice Department will file any criminal charges against any of the companies involved. An investigation has been under way since the accident and, Mr. Uhlmann said, “the drumbeat gets louder with every passing week for criminal charges against BP, Transocean and Halliburton.”
The violations issued by the Interior Department, which reflected the recent findings of a joint investigation by the Coast Guard and Interior Department, could also strengthen the legal position of victims of the spill who have filed claims against BP and the two contractors. More than 100,000 claimants are seeking compensation for economic losses in a federal court in New Orleans. The trial is scheduled to begin in February.
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