Members of President Barack Obama's Oil Spill Commission said this week that they were shocked to learn during their months of investigation that federal drilling rig inspectors generally know little or nothing about the process of safely lining and sealing an offshore oil well. Now, with a revamped federal regulatory agency promising to add dozens of new employees to exercise more robust control over offshore drilling, the commission wonders if the new front-line inspectors will understand the issues that played critical roles in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which killed 11 workers and fouled the Gulf of Mexico for months. Commission co-chairman William Reilly said Monday that he was alarmed to see interviews and online surveys conducted by the Interior Department's inspector general in which rig inspectors professed ignorance about the cementing process that seals a well off from dangerous bulges of natural gas, or about devices like centralizers installed to help ensure a good seal. "When we asked about cementing and centralizers, they said very freely, 'We don't know about that stuff; we have to trust the companies,'" Reilly said. "All they get is on-the-job training. It really is fairly startling, considering how sophisticated the industry has become. And the inspectors themselves are ...
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