Bush's interior secretary faults BP on drilling rules

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The massive oil spill in the U.S. Gulf could have been prevented if BP had followed safety rules governing offshore drilling, the former interior secretary in President George W. Bush's administration said on Tuesday.

Under fire from accusations of lax oversight during the Bush years, former Interior Secretary Gale Norton said the company was not following rules adopted under her tenure in 2003 and best procedures common with the rest of the industry.

"If regulations on the books and industry best practices had been followed properly, there may not have been a blowout," Norton told a panel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is probing the oil spill. "It appears that BP violated all those regulations that were on the books."

But Democratic lawmakers accused Norton and the former Bush administration of siding with the oil industry by failing to adopt tougher offshore drilling regulations proposed at the time.

The Bush administration was accused by critics and environmentalists of having close ties with the oil industry. Vice President Dick Cheney was chief executive of Halliburton Co, the oil fields service provider, before serving in the administration.

Representative Bart Stupak, the chairman of the panel, said regulations finalized in 2003 did not require a second set of backup shears that would have cut a leaking oil pipe.

Stupak's panel could play a big role in forging new legislation to govern the offshore industry as it probes BP's well, which has taken months to bring under control.

The Obama administration has slapped a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling while the spill is being investigated, drawing anger from oil companies and some lawmakers and local Gulf coast officials who say thousands of jobs are being lost.

Current Interior Secretary Ken Salazar stuck by his plan to keep the moratorium in place until November 30, reiterating it would not be lifted sooner unless the oil industry proves it can drill in a safe manner, has a strategy to prevent blowouts and can quickly respond to another big oil spill.

Stupak said the Interior Department, when it was run by Norton, "backed off when the oil and gas industry objected to proposals to strengthen government regulations."

But Norton said that the offshore drilling rules adopted in 2003 required exploration companies to show that the one set of blind-shear rams "were capable" of cutting the drill pipe that would be used.

Representative Henry Waxman, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said "serious mistakes" were made at Interior under both Bush and President Barack Obama.

"The cop on the beat was off-duty for nearly a decade," he said.

However, Waxman blamed Bush's energy task force, which was run by Cheney, for pushing the Interior Department to weaken regulations and quickly approve projects that would increase energy production.

Waxman said Norton failed to act on safety warnings about blowout preventers and she rejected proposals to strengthen standards for cementing wells.

"Those decisions sent a clear message: the priority was more drilling first, safety second," Waxman said.

Republican lawmakers on the House panel said it was Obama's Interior Department, run by Ken Salazar, that approved BP's drilling permit and spill response plan.

"All available evidence suggests the disaster resulted from the failure to follow existing regulations and best industry practices, not that George W. Bush prevented a second set of shear arms," said Representative Michael Burgess, the top Republican on the House subcommittee.

(Additional reporting by Ayesha Rascoe; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)