HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--When things go wrong in an offshore oil and gas drilling project, the blowout preventer is the last line of defense to keep an accident or unexpected event from turning into ...

Problems were detected in two blowout preventers on deepwater wells in the Gulf of Mexico last week, causing companies to temporarily cap the wells, officials with the companies involved confirmed to ...

After the accident, BP CEO Tony Hayward said of blowout preventers in general: "It's unprecedented for it to fail." Yet the AP review turned up instances where preventer seals have failed outright, ...

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO - A crane hoisted a key piece of oil spill evidence to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, giving investigators their first chance to personally scrutinize the blowout ...

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts. In the ongoing hearing looking into the Deepwater Horizon oil rig ...

WASHINGTON • Lawmakers eager to prevent another oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico — and prove to voters that they're responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster — are insisting on new standards for ...

NEW ORLEANS — A dispute between the owner of the rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and the federal government over how a key piece of evidence is being handled has been resolved. A lawyer for ...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said in a memorandum that problems were identified "in recent weeks" with blowout preventers on BP Plc's relief wells, which are seen as the ...

WASHINGTON - The hydraulic system that powered the blowout preventer at BP's failed Macondo well may never have had the capacity to stop last year's Gulf of Mexico spill or any other such emergency, ...

We have already improved the testing and certification requirements for blowout preventers over the last two years. Now, with the last of the investigation reports completed, we will be proposing new ...

These steel monsters known as blowout preventers or BOPs _ sometimes as big as a double-decker bus and weighing up to 640,000 pounds _ guard the mouth of wells. They act as the last defense to choke ...