USA: Federal Investigators to Test Deepwater Horizon’s BOP

Federal investigators probing the cause of the biggest U.S. offshore oil spill in history said it will take more than a month of tests to determine why a key device failed to prevent the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The 50-foot-tall stack of valves known as a blowout preventer (BOP) that sat atop BP’s Macondo well will undergo testing at a NASA base near New Orleans, the joint U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department panel said Wednesday on its website.

Det Norske Veritas, the Norway-based maritime risk-management association that represents 130 nations, will lead the examination and submit an interim report 35 days after the tests begin.

[mappress]

Source:Houston Chronicle  , October  17, 2010;