you can t trust mms. they ve shown they re too cozy with industry. reporter: too cozy, indeed. two years ago an internal investigation discovered ethical failures by more than a dozen mms employees and some were having sex and using marijuana and cocaine with oil company employees. they thought partying, drinking, accepting expensive tickets in hotel rooms somehow made it easier for them to understand the business of how much oil and how much natural gas was being taken out. reporter: cnn has reviewed hundreds of pages of documents and government reports dating back almost ten years, documents that paint mms as an agency that in the words of its critics, rubber-stamps the oil industry s actions and is unable to enforce safety regulations. for example, in 2000, mms issued a safety alert callings for off-shore drillers to have a backup system to have an acoustic switch that could prevent blowout like the one in
safety record. a significant refrain on the cause, the fail safe system failed and the blowout preventer that should have capped the leak. could one backup system that wasn t there have made a difference? a $500,000 part that could have shut in the blowout manually once it failed was not on the rig. and i think that will be a focal point going forward. reporter: environmental policy expert richard charters talking about a crucial switch which shuts down the well by remote control even if the rig is damaged or evacuated. the deep water horizon didn t have one. rigs in other countries have to have one. those switches don t have as good a track records as submersibles but they haven t worked either. it s a problem shedding light on broader questions surrounding
worked. and they simply haven t worked. officials say that they are frustrated. they don t know why the submersibles are not working. there s another backup system that could be in place and there s another control switch that could shut off the well head in the event that the rig is damaged. neither this rig nor any rig in the gulf of mexico has those because the u.s. law does not require them. other countries have them and some environmentalists believe that it could have happened. there are going to be a lot of changes and assessing to see how this could be corrected so it doesn t happen again. brian todd, thank you again. brian todd reported about these devices to stop these chemicals there and to solidify them and now we re being told from the alabama governor, bob riley,
our brian todd is following the investigation into the oil rig explosion and the spill. he s joining us now from venice, louisiana. brian? reporter: fred, bp officials clearly defending their safety record as they have been for the last couple of days. one of the questions we ve been asking that has been raised in this investigation is, was a backup system that could have prevented the blowup from malfunctions or maybe shut down the well on its own, this is called an acoustic switch, a remote control switch that could have shut down the valve on its own even if the blowout preventer had failed. this was not on this rig. other countries require those to be on the rig. the u.s. doesn t. this bp official said those acoustic switches don t have as good of track record, but still it s a question that s being asked. could added layers of safety have been in place here that could have prevented some of
really are reflecting on how this got so out of hand in the first place. this backup system, apparently. there was one in place and possibly there was a problem that may have prevented all this in the first place? explain. in other countries, in norway and brazil specifically, they require massive rigs to have a one type of backup system that is an acoustic switch. by remote control it shuts off the wellhead when an explosion occurs and can prevent massive amounts of oil. in the united states they are not required. a bp official said we all weighed in on these acoustic switches. in their view they are not as reliable as the other backup system they use here. what that is system?