Had Command of Oil Rig Before Blast

Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president who started working on the oil-spill response two days after it began, told a federal panel yesterday he never looked into who might have been at fault because he was focused on controlling the well. Another manager, David Sims, said he failed to read an e-mail about cementing procedures because it was difficult to see on his Blackberry.

The testimony from Wells, the highest-ranking BP executive to appear before the joint U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department panel probing the catastrophe, frustrated Hung Nguyen, co- chairman of the panel, who said no one from BP has accepted responsibility for actions that led to the disaster.

“We’ve had so many vice presidents of drilling come before us, I can’t even keep track,” said Nguyen, a Coast Guard captain. “A lot of them answered ‘I don’t know, I’m not responsible’ for however this or that. If everybody’s in charge, nobody’s in charge, is that correct?”