leak, likely before the disaster, that may have knocked it out of commission. and bp told the committee that the well in this case failed a key pressure test, just hours before the explosion. there was a discrepancy between two pressure readings that shouldn t have been there. one reading showed significant pressure in the well bore, the hole being drilled, while no pressure was observed in another line. the head of transocean, the rig owner, was asked about that today and what significance does that have? the significance of the discrepancy between the two pressures, would lead lead to a conclusion that there was something happening in the well bore that shouldn t be happening. committee chairman, henry waxman, said according to what they have been told, the committee, that could have been indicated that gas was seeping into the well causing that pressure which could have caused the explosion. the decision was still made after those tests to proceed with the drilling operati
round of inspections for this drilling operation? wolf, this particular well and this lease has been subject to significant environmental reviews. second of all, there s another environmental review and impact statement that s conducted prior to the lease sale. so there s multiple layers of environmental reviews that actually occurred. what happened here will be taken with the approach that we want fresh eyes and accountability. we don t want any stone left unturned as we find the answers to what happened here and why it happened. and so we will have independent reviews and investigations coming in to make sure that we get the answers to these fundamental questions. because at the end of the day, as you know, wolf, what happens with respect to the development of our energy supplies in this
companies involved in the drilling operation have been called to testify. congressional correspondent brianna keilar is with us. i m really interested in the second panel that i believe is getting under way shortly here if it hasn t already. what can we expect from the testimony from transocean, halliburton and bp executives? we are expect something finger-pointing because we have seen the testimony, tony, at least the part that they just give before the panel here. of course, it s the question and answer session that we ll be very curious about, but here s what we know that they re going to say. we have the head of bp america lamar mckay. he was expected to say it was the emergency shut off valve, that thing that we have been calling the blowout protector and it failed and that is the responsibility of transocean in the middle. you see transocean s chief. that is the responsible of transocean, he s expected to say because they re the subcontractor operating the rig.
what kind of oversight did you have on that drilling operation? we had the sort of oversight that an arc tech has on the building site. it s the industry structure. so we had oversight of the we had the design. they were doing the building. but, you know, i think we can review the issues around that in the future. our focus today is responding to the incident. we re focused on eliminating the leak. many options being pursued. first one going into place as we speak. we re focused on containment on the surface and we re focused on defending the shoreline. that is what you see going on all around me now. this spill is the size of large island now. how much larger will it get? that will depend on how successful we are in eliminating the leak and containing the spill. none of us today can say with certainty what that is. what we are doing is throwing the full resources of the coast
the costs of this deployment. the president obama also asked his advisor for homeland security, john brennan to hold a meeting yesterday to discuss the oil spill with top level cabinet members and included in that meeting which lasted over an hour, were homeland security secretary janet nab tanneau and interior secretary ken salazar, robert gates and epa administrator lisa jackson, the president has sent them to the gulf region to oversee the response to the oil spill. the commandant from the coast guard says a number of agencies are involved in the effort and are trying to stop the oil from spilling as well as to try it figure out how it happened. this is an unprecedented event and what you have are dual jurisdictions and management services over the drilling operation and the coast guard over the vessel which is connected by the riser pipe and we will do this together, and develop a set of facts and do that with total