 My name is Erwin Chemerinsky, and I'm between the law school. It's a real pleasure and honor to welcome you to this event, which is the beginning of our center on land use, environment, and natural resources. To the very beginning, when I became dean of the law school, I said that I wanted one of our areas of emphasis to be on environmental law. When you think about the legal issues that confront our society and the world, they're none more important than this. When you think of Southern California, you immediately see why it would be desirable for here at UCI to make a focus of the law school on land use, environment, and natural resources. But also given the strengths of this campus, it was a natural focus. So many parts of this campus are doing excellent work with regard to land use, environment, and natural resources. And there's already on the faculty at UCI a leading expert in the law in the area, Joe Demento, who's here in the front row. So as we began hiring for the faculty, it was always with an eye to building this as we will strengthen the law school. You're incredibly fortunate that Alex Camacho joined us, and I'll introduce Alex to you in just a moment. Alex has really taken the lead in building this center. He's working with a small committee that included Joe Demento, Carrie Mechelmetto, and Michael Robinson Dorn. They came up with the title, which is the Great Acronym Cleaner. And the goal is to make this a leading center, not just in Southern California, but nationally, in dealing with those issues that affect land use, environment, and natural resources. And I'm so appreciative that Alex Camacho agreed to be the first director of the center. And I'm going to briefly introduce him to you, and I'm going to let him introduce our speaker, Richard Lazarus. We couldn't have a better possible speaker to kick off the institute. If you don't know, Alex received his undergraduate degree here at UCI, received a law degree from Harvard, and then an alum from Georgetown. He began his teaching career at Notre Dame Law School, and we're so fortunate to be able to lure him away from that. I'm sure that the weather, though not today, played a role in that regard. But he is one of the leading experts in environmental law in the country. As I say, I'm so grateful that he's willing to be the first director of this center. I'm going to ask Alex to tell you a little about the center, and most of all, to introduce Professor Lazarus to you. So thank you, Irwin, and for your kind words, and for your great support for the Environmental Law Center, too. The clinic, definitely. But for our center here. I thank you all for coming and for making this event a success. The UCI Law Center for Land, Environment, and Natural Resources is really, its goal is really ambitious. It's really seeking to make UCI a hub for environmental law, not just in the region, not just nationally, but internationally. Many people here know that UCI is a great history for addressing complex environmental issues across various different disciplines. And this center really follows very much in that tradition. Our plan is to draw on UCI's existing strengths in environmental science, in various different sciences, in environmental social science, and then add law to the equation. And with our partners on campus, such as the New Kirk Center for Science and Society, we already planned various different events. I just wanted to highlight some of those for you so that you've got them in your calendar. So one of them is going to be, besides this inaugural event, interdisciplinary conferences on pesticides and on ocean pollution for this April and November, respectively. In addition, we're going to be having a week-long institute, again co-sponsored with the New Kirk Center, on sustainability for emerging international leaders for this summer. This annual speaker series, which this year is going to be focused on disaster law and various different other programs, some of them focused on students and some of them focused on the broader community. So we hope you can plan to attend some of these events as well. So enough about the center. Let me briefly introduce our distinguished speaker for today. Professor Richard Lazarus is the Howard and Catherine Abel Professor of Law at Harvard University. He is well known to many of us as a great environmental law scholar, a great environmental law teacher. I sat in in his classes when I was a fellow at Georgetown. He was quite impressive, and when he was a professor at Georgetown, and an environmental law advocate. He's represented a range of governments, local, state, and the federal government in 40 cases before the United States Supreme Court. More recently and more directly related to, I believe, his talk for today, he served as the executive director for President Obama's National Commission on the BP Deep Water Horizon oil spill, which was charged with investigating the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and recommending changes in law and in policy to reduce the risk and harms from future spills. So the world watched as Professor Lazarus and his commission investigated one of the worst environmental disasters in our recent history and we're honored to have him here to reflect on his experiences there as our inaugural speaker, so please join me in welcoming him. Thanks, Alex. I'm delighted to be here and to give this talk today. Most importantly, to celebrate UC Irvine School of Law's creation of this new center on land, environment, and natural resources with this inaugural lecture. This is my first visit to UC Irvine campus, but I see a lot of familiar faces here. I have a lot of close friends and colleagues, including here on the faculty. Professor Joe Demento, who is really a giant in the field of environmental law. We were former colleagues at the Justice Department back in 1986. That's a while ago. Professor Carrie Menkelmetto and I and Carrie, as you all know, is really the person who created the field of dispute resolution. We were colleagues on the faculty at Georgetown. Robinson Dornan, I've known him for a long time. He was a clinical worker. And of course, Professor Camacho was at Georgetown as a fellow before he joined the academy. And then, of course, everyone knows your dean, a very quiet, unassuming legal scholar. All right, my primary talk for today is about my recent services executive director of the President's Oil Spill Commission, investigating the Gulf Oil Spill. About both procedure and substance. I'm trying to give you an insider view of the challenges of launching this kind of investigation on behalf of the president and then, in particular, the challenges the Gulf Oil Spill presented. I think actually the procedure inside, look, is no less interesting than the substance of what we found. And I think it's also hard to understand our findings and their conclusions, unless you understand that procedural context. But I also want to place the spill and its investigation in some historical context. The 2010 Gulf Oil Spill was clearly an environmental catastrophe. But catastrophes have long served as a major force in the emergence and evolution of modern environmental law here in the United States. So my talk is kind of three parts. First, the role of catastrophe in environmental law. The second, the April 2010 Gulf Oil Spill and the challenge of its investigation. And finally, what we found and the import for the future of environmental law. So first, catastrophes. Now, strictly empirical matter, catastrophes have clearly played a sustained role in influencing the emergence of modern environmental law in the United States, certainly during the 1970s. The roots of the 1970s laws are really traceable to a seriously discreet events that occurred in this nation that really captured the fears of the American people beginning in the 1940s and culminating in the 1960s. That includes the dangers of air pollution brought home by the events in the north of Pennsylvania in the 1940s where 20 people died, 1,000 were injured. And that event really brought home the clear significance of the public health stakes of air pollution. The dangers of water pollution, the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, seemingly literally on fire, as anomalous as that would appear to be. The Santa Barbara Oil Spill, closer here to home, that was brought into everyone's home though because of the advent of satellite TV. So people for the first time could see live images of what was happening in the Santa Barbara Oil Spill. The danger of toxic chemicals in the nation's air, water, and its food supply. DVT on the nation's crops indeed in the neighborhoods as well. And of course no one gave better expression to these fears than Rachel Carson whose words of potential catastrophe were in the title of her celebrated book. And the dangers of radiation. The ultimate catastrophe. Invisible but deadly from nuclear explosions. It gave new meaning to catastrophe. No less in the planet and life itself seemed to be in the balance. And for those who were alive back then the ready reminder of what was referred to was the doomsday clock where actually they would tell you how closely we were to midnight, the end of life on earth given the risk of nuclear welfare. The political movement rose out of these fears. There's a catastrophe and aspirations for a better world. And federal lawmakers in the U.S. but also in many states but just focusing on federal laws they enacted sweeping new statues. Here the law is passed just in the 1970s. Law after law after law. Pollution control laws, natural resource conservation management laws and the laws showed increasing detail and prescription over time. It was the threat of catastrophe which propelled law making. It broke through the log jams in Congress. To get Congress to enact what we perceive in the late 1970s as laws needed to address abandoned and active hazardous waste sites around the country the Department of Justice launched a series of lawsuits, 50 lawsuits almost simultaneously addressing these sites around the country on very, very tenuous legal grounds. The legal theories were thin at best. But the object of the suits was part to publicize the problem. To publicize Love Canal. To publicize the Valley of Drums in Kentucky. To publicize the Stringfellow site here in California. To get Congress to pass a law and it worked. Congress enacted the Conference of our Response Compensation Liability Act in 1980. Even more tellingly is what did not pass in the fall of 1980 and that was parallel oil spill legislation. In 1980 there were two bills in Congress. One on hazardous substances, the other on oil and that's why CERCLA actually has a petroleum exclusion from it because it was being dealt with in the other law. Only one of them passed in 1980 and that was the Superfund Statute. The other one never passed. At least then. It took another decade for it to pass. It passed ten years later in 1990. And it passed soon after the Exxon Valdez went aground in Alaska. It took a catastrophe. Took a catastrophe to explain to people why you need these laws. Why does it take a catastrophe? Because a catastrophe is what best wakes people up in the real world to the consequences of failing to anticipate risk. Now the same thing that was in 1989 the Gulf oil spill was twenty years later on April 20, 2010. Two months later in June of 2010 the White House asked me if I would take on the job investigating the root causes of the Gulf oil spill by serving as Executive Director of the President's Commission. At that time there were still thousands and thousands of gallons of oil going into the Gulf of Mexico every day. Now there's a rich history for this kind of presidential investigatory commission. Not surprisingly the first one began with the first president George Washington. It arose in the during actually the whiskey insurrection of 1790 because the new government needed had a big debt from the Revolutionary War. To pay that debt they decided to impose taxes on domestic spirits. And folks in western Pennsylvania wouldn't consider very west today but then it was considered western Pennsylvania a rebel. In the President of the United States George Washington sent in some presidential commissioners peace commissioners to try to talk sense into them. They failed and he had to send troops in next. So it was an inelospicious beginning for the presidential commission. So the really the first modern presidential investigatory commission is Pearl Harbor. And then after the bombing of Pearl Harbor President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed Supreme Court Justice Owen Roberts to chair it and said your charges discover a dereliction of duty and errors in judgment that led to this tragedy. For me my initial challenges were defined by the President's charge to the commission his executive order said in pretty clear words what we were supposed to do. We were supposed to examine the relevant facts and current root causes supposed to identify the root causes of the spill and we were supposed to develop options regarding to mitigating the impact of the spill. And being a lawyer and a law professor I take this language quite literally. Now why is this so challenging? It's so challenging because when you take on a job like this I quickly discovered it's very different than someone says would you like to be executive director of the Federal Election Commission of the Securities Exchange Commission or the Federal Trade Commission because actually when you take this on the only thing that exists is you there is no commission. You have some commissioners but they're not employees actually their job is to approve what you do but they're investigating at all they're not full-time they have their own job their job is to approve what you do so you have nothing you don't have a building you don't have an office you don't have a piece of paper you don't have stationary, letterhead computers, blackberries, assistant I had my student RA who I went to and I said I think my life is about to change would you like to come with me and do this you have to create this out of nothing and that's hard you have to go zero trade a commission as quickly as possible and you have six months to complete your work now if you compare that to other commissions the Federal Crisis Inquiry Commission the 9-11 commission the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission those commissions tend to have 20 to 24 months to complete the reports it's a big difference and it's not just a factor of 4 between 6 and 24 because of the fixed time it takes to start up and end so that's a very short period of time what also made it challenging in my instance is the crisis is ongoing you compare that to the other kinds of commissions if you think of Threemile Island or you think of the Space Challenger Presidential Commissions with very similar wording in their executive orders for those you had an explosion and then it's done if you applied that to my situation it would have been as if there had been an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon Rig on April 20 some people had died tragically and basically no oil had gone out and that was all over at that point now of course if that had happened we probably wouldn't have had a presidential commission but our situation is completely different we have an ongoing crisis that is capturing the American fears and everyone because this thing is every day you can see it you can see it coming out you can turn on your computer and watch it coming out it's like Pearl Harbor every day in terms of the risk and onslaught of millions of gallons of oil reaching one of the most precious coasts in the United States surrounded with wetlands which will soak this oil up like a sponge this is in Alaska we can scrub it off of rocks this is all wetlands the most incredible ecological economic areas of the country enormous vibrate and it's still happening it's not over yet it's still happening and that causes lots of issues one big problem is that my clock is running and it's not over yet so the facts aren't all in but my six months is arguably ticking already all the other commissions are after the fact not during but for mine it's still happening at the same time that we're going and that makes it much harder the other reason it makes it much harder is the scope of our investigation is much greater we don't just have to look at the causes the root causes of the blowout itself we then have to look at the causes of the failed containment effort afterwards which is a major part of this that they couldn't contain the well after the blowout and that's not even done yet it's going to take 87 days it's not going to be until July 15 that we have the first initial containment we actually don't have the well killed until about 8 weeks later but my clock is running I'm going to have to look at the blowout, the containment and then I look at the response actions as well and that dramatically increases the scope of my work the blowout has just a few discreet players a few discreet players in industry and the federal government the containment effort includes far more players in the private sector and the government the response actions of the oil now I'm no longer dealing with just interior or maybe the part of energy if I'm actually going to oversee to try to see what kind of job they do the response action I'm now going from interior to EPA versus persons the Army Corps of Engineers where it's berms for the Coast Guard for its oversight for the Navy for burning the oil off I mean I have dramatically greater work that I need to do to try to figure out whether the response action happened as well so much greater increase I also looked at the title of my commission words matter and I assume when the President of the United States does this and they write this, I have to take every word seriously notice they called us the National Fish on the BPP Water Horizon Oilsville and offshore drilling that means we actually have to opine on offshore drilling more broadly than large not just on the spill and what caused it but the portent for the future of offshore drilling in the United States that means Alaska because that's where the big issue is it really means there's pressure on us to go from the Gulf of Mexico and talk about the future of offshore drilling in Alaska they're also at this point exacerbating political factors in case you didn't know this is a highly politically charged time in the United States everything is political there's a tendency for media folks and politicians to view everything as red blue, democratic, republican liberal or conservative even when it should not be there should be nothing political about this kind of investigation any more than there should be the Chief Justice or warrants investigation of the Kennedy assassination this should be a nonpartisan straight down the line investigation not a politically charged one but that's not the world we're in unfortunately and that affected our work it affected the commissioners the President of the United States nominated seven commissioners and this is my ultimate audience my threshold audience they're the ones that have to approve the work that I'm going to do with the staff because it's their impromatur which gives it significance two co-chairs former senator governor of Florida Bob Graham former EPA administrator Bill Riley they chose a two co-chair approach this has been the tradition recently I don't actually like the tradition it's a bipartisan approach there's a democrat, Bob Graham there's republican, Bill Riley I think these should be nonpartisan not bipartisan we're not going to find the fact we're going to find the facts by having a neutral investigation here are my commissioners, Don Bosch President of the Center for Environmental Science at Maryland Jerry Olmer Dean of the Harvard School of Applied Engineering Terry Garcia Vice President of Natural Geographic Francis Beineke President of NRDC and Fran Olmer former Lieutenant Governor of Alaska and Chancellor of the University of Alaska so those are the seven commissioners and that's a challenge that's a challenge for me I think these are seven spectacularly talented smart committed individuals but that created a political challenge which affected my work and I have to worry about how I'm going to get this work done what do you notice about that group what's missing from that group nobody of color no focus of color that's not what generates the headlines though no one from industry right and no one from science with an actual expertise in oil and gas drilling no one from the business community really and no one from sort of an expert engineer in oil and gas drilling and at least not obviously no one from the Gulf of Mexico now the Gulf of Mexico is its own place it's its own culture it's its own politics and there's not anyone there obviously from the Gulf of Mexico with the exception of one person and who's that Bob Graham but Bob Graham is from Florida one state against offshore drilling and Bob Graham is a long time opponent of offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico this is not going to make those other Gulf states very happy it's not going to democrat or republican it's not going to make all those states and the industry happy and then you say now where are the republicans here since you're sort of doing this to republicans well republican is Bill Riley Bill Riley is a fabulous person a wonderful person incredibly valuable but most republicans are not going to view Bill Riley as republican most democrats are going to view Bill Riley as republican he's the kind of thing democrats like to state the republican party should be very progressive liberal on lots of social issues former president of the World Wildlife Fund he's on the board of ConocoPhillips that he's the environmentalist on the board of ConocoPhillips so they're going to look at this and say this is a stacked deck this is a green anti-drilling stacked deck and we have our Gulf states and industry which depend upon this we are revenues depend upon it and you put the president of NRDC on it which litigates against us let's just say they weren't happy and they weren't they didn't feel any better what the executive director was named for me and my favorite line of this editorial from the Wall Street Journal was this one so what's the upshot the upshot is the president of the United States names us creates us he requests congress to appropriate $15 million for our budget requests subpoena authority for us like every president's commission is going to have subpoena authority it passes the house within the first few days like 423 to 1 or 2 at the end of June of 2010 and it never passes the senate never comes to a full vote budget or subpoena power never comes to a vote instead a lot of folks on the senate side when they look at that commission there's democrat and republicans they instead say we think there should be a new commission a new commission a legislative commission would best to be able to go for oil spill with some picked by the president some picked by the minority some picked by the majority and they tell the white house we will pass your money for your commission if you support this commission well that's a disaster there are several commissions one from the president of the United States one from congress going along which is the commission which is investigated but this is the times we live in and part of the makeup of the commissioners themselves helped create this issue other hindrances in the budget back up the executive order made us a federal advisory committee that's a challenge all our meetings had to be in public that meant that all our deliberations had to be in public that means I have to come up with a consensus document for my seven commissioners and all the deliberations everything has to be in public it's hard to do that when you're doing an investigation trying to get people to give you information about what happened in this very highly charted thing where all these lawsuits are going to be brought I discovered this firsthand we are first thing we're sworn in at the end of June I send e-mail to my commissioners and I say we're all going to meet for the first time on Tuesday where we get sworn in if any of you are going to spend a night Tuesday night I'd be great if you come over to my wife from our house for dinner that night I think this is a nice thing to do a social thing to do they don't know me, I don't know them we'll get a chance to meet and talk to have that time and invite those people over your house you have 30 days to notice the Federal Register and have a public phone call I see that it's wrong that is wrong I don't believe it but I say I'm not going to fight this one I'll save my pack of fights for when I care about my pack of fights but that tells you some of the challenges that we had so how did we try to respond to this the first issue was to look at the six months and then read the Executive Order really closely well it's actually six months of the commission's first meeting I can handle this I told a student he said your papers do four weeks after we meet one week this Friday now I'd love to meet you this Friday but I'm really busy how about three months from now we'll meet three months from now so the quick way to handle this is actually don't meet don't meet and then six months after your first meeting it's triggered in fact if you looked at all those commissions with their 20 and 24 they generally need four months after their 20 after four because they aren't triggering their clock so you wait I look at this and I say to my commission alright it's end of June June 30th let's meet in September that's pretty quick that's like all the other ones September will give me time to hire a staff get an office get equipment vet people for all the confidentiality information work so we actually have that first meeting in September we can give you something that we can start to present for hearings so let's have the first meeting in September and then our report will be done in six months later March our report will be done on the anniversary how about that what do you think the answer is why not why can we not wait till September because crisis is going on it's still happening you still have it's an ongoing explosion we're still so the president's commission is going to say thank you very much we know there's hundreds of millions of gallons of oil falling in the Gulf of Mexico we'll see you when we come back in September meet there was enormous pressure on the commission to show they cared to show they were engaged to show they were out there there was confusion about what we were doing because it was an ongoing crisis lots of people thought we should be containing the oil we're the presidents we should contain the oil we should find a way to stop the oil from coming we should be in charge of overseeing the response action we should overrule the president I think on his moratorium on deep water drilling hard to convince people that you're a retrospective group when the problem is still happening and that made it harder again for us to get our work done so what do you think we had our first meeting July 12 and I told my commission I said look I don't have a staff I just now by July 2nd 3rd I have an office now one kind of circle very nice office but I need to hire people if I have to hold a meeting on July 12 I can't be hiring a staff because now then I'm going to have to get consultants or someone as fast as possible hold meetings and it's been delayed then they wanted July 12th in their private and there's some merit to their what they want to do you got to show that we exist we got to show that we care so on July 12th and 13th we held two days a full day national televised hearings on the Gulf Oilers Bill and we spent two days of site visits on the Saturday and Sunday before that in all the Gulf States that's what I know when that is done I'm trying to hire a staff as quickly as I can because I need a staff we actually need to do work we don't need to read newspaper headlines we need to do our work ourselves we are a presidential commission and we have to do our own work and not rely on the work of others so I hired a staff about 60 staff was all in place by about the 2nd week of August with offices and computers and the rest if you look at my staff I was looking for people who had nonpartisan for straight down the line investigation I had a zillion people from every environmental group in the world wanting to come work for me I wouldn't hire them we already look green I didn't need that I didn't need anyone who came with any ideological baggage or perceived ideological baggage our job was straight down the line we need to have a product at the end of the day that was credible not one that looked like it was preconceived based on bias I wanted people from business I wanted people from industry my working assumption is I thought the White House made a mistake with this commission these are fabulous people I would I would put on that some business people when something like this happens this kind of catastrophe happens the business community cares deeply it's their members who have died 11 of them they don't like to see mistakes done they know what it means to the family they know what it means to have the Gulf of Mexico shut down as a result of this they don't like mistakes done in their world and they're ready quickly to judge it and they have the expertise and the credibility to judge it so I wanted some business people to make it clear that we weren't just some green democratic machine so I hired a chief scientist and a chief counselor Richard Sears was my chief scientist 30 plus years Michelle Wood during drilling and exploration retired, fabulous teaching at MIT and at Stanford real industry person understands it understands the technology, understands the drilling and has credibility with that world knows what he knows and what he doesn't know and knows how to have the access to talk to people in the industry who know how to answer these questions and Brett Barber is my chief counsel Brett Barber at the time 77, now 78 years old Helen Cockner-Skies West Point Graduate Civil Engineer has his own law firm Bartlett Beck, one of the best trial lawyer firms in the country flies his own plane importantly he did the investigation for industry of the Piper Alpha Explosion in the North Sea rig where 186 people died in late 1980s and his investigation was widely credited for identifying the problem and he is well established enough that unlike most lawyers out there he didn't care about conflict for a lot of lawyers it wouldn't take this thing on because it would do six months of public service and they their law firm is going to be precluded for some of the most significant big litigation in the country on whatever side when we called Brett Bartlett up he said, by the time you called me he was also not in St. Edwin George Bush's trial lawyer in Bush v. Gore because George Bush wanted a really good lawyer not because he was a Democrat not because he was a Republican he wanted a tough lawyer that's what I wanted and very big ties with industry they know him, they understand him and they fear Brett Bartlett former managing partner of Kirkland Ellis and it raised some eyebrows in the White House when they heard that I named Chief Counsel Brett Bartlett who had done this trial representing George Bush at Bush v. Gore that was fine with me I wanted a good lawyer and that's what we were about we were trying to send a message to everyone that we were not partisan here is our timetable I met with our staff in early August at our first meeting and I said, alright here's our timetable our report is due actually it's not due January 11 it was due January 12 remember our first meeting was on July 12 but my staff informed me that January 12 would be the one year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake and we could not get the President of the United States report on the one year anniversary of the Haitian earthquake because we wanted to be the story of the day so that eliminated a day we had to get it from January 11 I did not like that because every day counts so here we are January 11th we had to hand the President of the United States to complete a report we called GPO and said, alright GPO when do you have to have the report so we can hand the President of the United States on January 11 and they said, you have to give it to us on December 21 because it has to be and what you have to do is camera ready, done done, camera ready all we're doing is taking pictures and putting it together and we have to use GPO by wall so we did December 21 and any after that we cannot guarantee we'll give it to the President of the United States by January 11 so you have until December 21 that means all typos all proof, index, everything done, here it is December 21 now you have to work backwards alright to do that that means by December 10 I need to have a fully approved document through all the commissioners the whole report I'm going to then do the quality control necessary after that to make sure everything is right this is not a law review article this is a Presidential Commission report on a highly visible topic where you can have lawyers like Jim Drazen scouring this thing for mistakes for a long time we have to have our credibility there so we need time to make sure everything is right and we had lots of fact-finders to check every single fact in there to make sure it was right December 10 now to do that, that means the last possible time I can get draft chapters of commissioners is December 1 if I'm going to try to work through the whole report and get consensus on the whole report to the commissioners that's here by December 1 now to do that that means I need the draft chapters for my staff no later than November 15 because I need to review it I need to review and go through it to make sure this has a consistent coherent voice, the whole report that means they have to be done with their investigation by about November 1 we're starting at the first week of August but you can't play with this that's what it is, and I said to my staff that's what it is what I'm going to ask everyone to do is unreasonable and ridiculous but that's what we're charged to do and I'm deadline-oriented that's what we're going to do we're going to get it done we're going to change those dates that's what we have and I can't change any of those later dates, earlier dates if you don't get signed to me on time on the earlier dates if you don't get it to me then we'll have less time for the next step it doesn't work we always don't have enough time for the next step so nothing moves no deadlines move that's what we have outside my office was this chart showed every chapter and every thing that had to happen findings, recommendations, drafts everything that happened with specific dates and when everything was going to happen for every chapter reviewed by the ED, final revision likely findings, recommendations, subcommittee reports review and comment every single thing had a date and we had parallel teams a team on containment a team on the blowout a team on response working simultaneously we had people starting to work on chapter one in August you had to actually figure out how to construct a report in a way that you could have a great report done in time so the context the procedure dictates how I'm structuring everything to get it done we also couldn't hide I'm a law professor my preference would be give me an assignment, thank you very much my staff and I will disappear we will come back on January 11 and give you a beautiful paper but we couldn't do that we had to show we were visible we were there, we cared so every month we had national televised hearings for at least two days in July August, September October, November and December with the commissioners up front you have to tell the world that you're significant and important so we did it with our venue we did it with TV we did it with how do we set up the rooms we did it by having placards, by having the commissioners weigh up, I had the lights where they are you send a message of whether you're a big player or you're a real player and we were sending a message of whether we are the president's commission on this we also did it by issuing staff papers as we went so people would know what we were doing what we were finding and by fact, every time we gave a staff paper to the commissioners it was dead in the public domain that's a problem that's also an opportunity that empowers the staff because what the staff says is being public public domain clear we met business first paper came out October 6 where we criticized the White House for the under estimations of the oil flow in the beginning and the under estimations of the oil left at the end in August we made clear our independence from the administration and received some very favorable press for doing so we wash what we were saying if you give me a political job I'll do a political job if you give us a non-partisan non-political job our job is the non-partisan non-political and they call it strength that's what you do as a lawyer depends on your mission and what your charge is they were not happy with me but that was our job we issued our own results of cement testing based on our own studies of Halliburton cement which we were able to get the formula out of Halliburton when no one else had including the United States we did that because of Richard Sears who had the trust of industry and Chevron agreed to test the cement which is an incredibly good and nice gesture by Chevron again because they had credibility with some industry at this point and it led to some very significant stories about Halliburton cement based on our own testing of that cement so what did we accomplish well that's the meeting on January 11 in the Roosevelt Room we met the deadline and the President of the United States the report on January 11 after getting the GPO on December 21 we met the deadline we were under budget originally they said $15 million we spent approximately $10 million to do our work you can ask me where we got the money we actually produced three products the commission's report which is this document a separate chief counsel's report it's about 350 porn pages and an interactive website as well that's the tip of the iceberg there are about 20 staff papers on different topics all of which are available on the website as of January 11 different products for different audiences the final commission report that's for the President for Congress and industry and the general public it has three parts the path to the tragedy the exposure in the aftermath and lessons learned we deliberately decided to write it in an engaging narrative style so anyone could pick it up and understand it this is how it began chapter one opening line on Tuesday, April 20 the Halliburton cement engineer sent an email to the rig he had good news we had completed the job and it went well those are the first lines that tells you the kind of report we're writing you read that first chapter you're there with the people on the rig you know what they don't yet know as you're reading you know what's about to happen and you see the people on the rig the ones who made the most immediate mistake they died they weren't trying to make mistakes they weren't doing it to put money in the pocket they were making mistakes and some of their mistakes cost the lives of their friends he had to understand the root causes what causes those mistakes not always look for good versus evil but look for systems look for structure look for decision making and we had a chapter on the future of offshore drilling consistent obviously with our title we have a separate chief councils report this report takes about 40 pages here and expands it to about 400 pages and this is not for the faint hearted chief council is Ms. Nomer this is a highly technical engineering report written by very smart lawyers we would think we're highly accomplished but they're not they're really really smart lawyers who know how to talk to really really smart engineers oh actually Barbara Debbie Greenfield and one of my deputy chief councils had a master's in petroleum engineering from Stanford and worked on the rig and clerked for Justice O'Connor we had some very good people but they're nice of me that they're experts on it but very detailed report on every part of what happened on that rig great detail the interactive website version you can click on these things and actually see how they work see how drilling works this report this report saves lives this report gets eaten up by industry and by part of the interior no one wants to make a mistake they want to do things right they can't and this report is out there and used in schools and engineering schools that would not happen again and of course the website the website is for anyone high school students the history of offshore drilling the history of regulatory oversight of offshore drilling what happened minute by minute on the well all quite interesting and very very informative so how did we achieve this not with saying the hurdles first the deadline very hardworking staff murderous timetable high risk of failure we actually did not know until December 27th December 17th is when I decided we were going to meet the deadline before that we had no idea what would be the fact we'd meet the deadline but you can get the commissioners to all agree get all the facts checking done everything done we actually did not know but the deadline was enormously powerful because I could say to people that I could say to my commissioners this is the deadline give it to me now agree this or I don't know what will be we won't meet the deadline that gives you enormous leverage the commissioners actually the first time they approved the report back and forth I would have individual negotiations with seven commissioners I wouldn't do with all seven commissioners because backup one, one, one, one draft, draft, draft, draft I would let them know where I thought they were disputes I'd let them know where things were where I needed to negotiate a consensus and they would have to trust me when I said we have consensus on a chapter when I announced we had consensus on a chapter what did I not do showed them the chapter but I also couldn't gain them if we didn't have consensus I wouldn't say that we'd never actually but when we really had it I would tell them and they would trust me and they did trust me and no one's complaining about anything we wrote you have to actually reach closure we actually sent the GPO I didn't send it to all seven commissioners at that moment I waited until we got all treated in fact we're done again it works it's not misleading, it's not playing games with them it's getting consensus so we can have a finished product and they were delighted with the finished product but you have to have things end in order to get things done the other thing we did we were under budget, $10 million not $50 million that's because no one got rich we paid government rate for a partner that paid $65 an hour a partner from his firm about 47 years, another one I paid $55 an hour I paid no one over at GS15 Richard Sears I paid then he paid $60 an hour this was public service you shouldn't be doing this work to get wealthy we're doing this work because it's important public service to do it and people will do that they'll do it trial of graphics it's actually unbelievable graphics we had we negotiated a very good deal and they were willing to do it public service and they did such a great job with this that their phones are ringing off the hook for all the people wanting to do more work smart business we came well under budget and people will do it you pay them, you don't try to make them rich in this kind of situation so what did the commission find? actually one thing I got to mention we also had Fred Bartlett and Fred Bartlett could rub some people the wrong way remember we did not have subpoena authority we had a walking subpoena you need subpoena authority we had Bartlett and Bartlett would call these people up and he'd say we need this, we need that, we need this, we need that and they would trust him and they'd say no he'd say look I really think you're not doing your company a service have you talked to the board about this lawyers? because I think if you talk to your board explain what's going on here they're not making a smart business decision they're going to go to the press conference and say the 11 Americans died on April 20, 2010 and my only job is to make sure that it doesn't happen again and they won't cooperate I'm the best game you have in town I'm not suing anybody I'm not prosecuting anybody my only job is to find out what happened to tell the American people present who doesn't happen again and he was incredibly transparent in ways I never would have done but it's very effective we had a big hearing in November Brett Barber would say all right the hearing is next week BP or Halberg the transition comes to my office I will show you what I'm going to say on Monday I'll go through my thing I'll do it for you you tell me anything I'm saying that's wrong if something's wrong I'll change it, if it's not wrong I'm not you can show it to me ahead of time you think this is what I'm going to say before we put out the Halberg cemented we showed it to Halberg this is what we're going to say if you think we got something wrong tell us and you've got to have confidence to do that and if they could convince us we were wrong we would change them if they couldn't we would they would be unhappy but you give people a chance it gives you credibility you have that kind of self-confidence and you did they were invited in they actually read some draft they couldn't take it with them they could sit in an office right next to mine they could sit there and they said anything wrong we wouldn't even have to change it but again, big mistake we made we changed it we had to convince us the mistake was in there it hasn't changed it very impressive on his part so what did they find I'm just going to highlight some of the things we found on the blowout itself we surprised some people we did not say no to deepwater drilling a lot of people would we'd say deepwater drilling can't be we didn't we said action doesn't have to be abandoned it can be done safely this is a central message of the report a lot of people don't notice that that's a big deal it's an amazing technology it has yielded enormous benefits to this country and it's enormous potential and it's enormous potential thought it has to be done safely and it can be done safely they said it can be done safely it doesn't mean it is being done safely but it means it can be done safely we also said we didn't think that well-designed by itself a lot of people said was sort of fundamentally flawed it wasn't what most a lot of people did but we didn't think the well-designed itself was necessarily flawed it led to the creation of certain risks that then had to be dealt with but that's different than saying it was an improper fundamentally flawed well-designed we instead found a series of mistakes by a bunch of major companies where they failed to do and conduct overall risk management that was by the three parties BP, Haliburton TransOcean and by the federal agency responsible for its oversight our conclusion was none of them were considering the accumulated risks of this deep water drilling they had not taken account of the increased risk as it moved to ever deeper waters the biggest challenge one faces when you do deeper and deeper drilling anywhere but including the golf backs up we're talking like miles by the surface of the ocean it's amazing what they can do these days, these engineers but when you're doing that further and further down you've got to maintain the equilibrium just right because the pressures and these reservoirs way way down the bottom of deep oceans the temperatures and the pressures are huge that's fabulous the temperatures and pressures are huge because it does mean means you're not going to spend a lot of money to pull this stuff out because when it happens it comes out but it means that when you're going down you've got to maintain the pressure just right you have just enough pressure when you go in it doesn't overcome your pressure and push you out and not too much pressure when you go in that you push it out and fracture the reservoir you fracture the reservoir you've got uncontrollably spillage all over the bottom of the ocean which you can do nothing about so as you drill down you've got to do it just right you do it through drilling mudway you do it through the cementing process as you're going down use this very carefully calibrated to get it just right and the margin of error gets smaller and smaller as you go down and they're pretty good at this with amazing results and this one they stop but you've got to do it just right and then they made some mistakes the margin of error gets smaller as you go down but you have to take into account of the increasing risks of doing so of how you set up your well and they made mistakes in the cement the cement is crucial the cement is what stops keeps everything in place puts pressure and stops release is going up the side of the pipe going down of the ankles and the halibur of the cement we've found they've been reasonably the cement was bought it wasn't stable without stable cement it's been a good thing in collapse and there weren't sufficient centralizes that keep it in place we found mistakes in the temporary abandon procedure one of the most crucial things you do is once you actually produce you've got the oil and gas under there what you do is you abandon your site you cap off in the bottom of the ocean you cap it off you move your rig away and later on you come back with your rig and cap it off you've got to do it just right get the pressures just right and you're caping it off and BP kept changing its procedures every new days and what they were going to do in much order I'm going to place them on here and put this stuff there and try to get it just right they kept changing it with very little oversight from the federal government and one of the most risky important series of decisions being made you can see the blow up finally happening and what had happened and we saw emails which said April 17 they're talking about what they're trying to do and how they're trying to make decisions over this and look what they say on April 17 we're flying by the seas of our parents that's what BP engineered of the time one of the most important things you do when you try to decide whether things are in equilibrium series of tests positive pressure tests negative pressure tests it turns out there is very little training and make sure there is no leakage there is no rules at all oversight by the federal government for how these tests should be done and very little training by BP and it failed the pressure test over and over again that was a warning problem, problem, no equilibrium the people on the ring explained it away they explained it away no one knows what the bladder effect was the person who says the bladder effect, the person everyone trusted he died he didn't want to make a mistake but he did make a mistake the trans-ocean employees on the ring are looking at signs trying to see what's happening and there were signs of a problem there were kicks pressure kicks they should have learned that we have a problem stop the process where do you see it? there it is, right there millions and millions of dollars it is amazing technology you could spend a little bit more money making a few hundred dollars to create monitor systems that would actually show you what is the problem there was a certain situation maybe a red light would go huh, huh but instead there's been no effort anywhere commensurate with the amazing technology for drilling to think about the risk and how to manage the risk well because people were assuming the way the problems the most controversial thing that we concluded was that the problems were as we said systemic people were very unhappy with us saying these problems were systemic in my view that's clearly correct what's the basis general industry failure to match investment drilling technology with risk management and with response and containment the mistakes that were made by the three biggest players BP, Halliburne, TransOcean these are not marginal players TransOcean is the largest operative rigs in the Gulf BP, one of these is not the largest let's see a beef order Halliburne supplies the cement to basically everybody these are the people making the mistakes and BP told everyone in their papers if there's a well blowout we can contain it we have the technology to do it and every single oil company says the same thing in their papers every single one of those major oil companies told the United States we have the technology to contain it and they were all wrong that's a systemic problem they all said it and when this well blowout all didn't have it now what they managed to accomplish in 87 days without that technology was pretty amazing got to give a lot of credit to the BP engineers what they did in 87 days lack of trade, lack of planning inexcusable but what those engineers did with lack of planning in 87 days that actually kept that well was very impressive where lucky it was BP if that had been a fly by night company with that well blowout which it could have been they would have declared bankruptcy on April 21st and who knows how we would have ever have capped that well no less systemic was the government Democrat Republican administrations alike were seduced by the profit this part of the terror is the second largest generator of revenue for the federal treasury after the IRS billions and billions of dollars everyone liked the money flowing in Democratic administrations like it Republican administrations like it and all of them all of them were advocating the responsibility to ensure that this resource that belongs to the nation and future generations was being developed safely just a final couple of thoughts I'm not going to claim that running one of these things is particularly good for one's health but on balance I thought we did a good job and now it's responsibly of industry and the government take the necessary steps and we have a lot of recommendations Department of Interior has done a lot of them a lot of tone a lot of very good structural reform is done with the interior and industry has taken some good steps as well not everything we think they should do but they've actually done a fair amount where there's been nothing done is Congress Congress has not passed anything any legislation in response to this oil spill there's a lot of low hanging fruit here there are good resources to develop safely but it takes some resources to do it and it's said people complain about the pace of the development but you can't have the pace in turn to where it could be unless you have the regulatory resources at the same time because that's not responsible but Congress has not done a lot can be done without Congress but Congress hasn't done anything contrast that to the 1970s contrast that even the 1990s there was a time when it took a catastrophe to get things done now you can't even get it done when you've had it and it doesn't take much reminder to think what that means it may well be that this golf oil spill will not prove to be the unbelievable disaster we thought it was going to be in the summer of 2000 will not know the long term damage until we have the long term but the reason they think it's not going to be as tragic as we feared back then but just a few months after we stopped in the spring of 2011 you can see what happens if you don't plan for tragedy this is the tsunami in Japan that is unmitigating that's the only plan little small decisions they a little bit of money in there cause tremendous reversal thank you thank you Richard, I feel like I'm hearing here for you so we have some time for questions these have been hopefully strategically around the room and hopefully hopefully we will I guess we will volunteer to collect them while Professor Michael Mills is grabbing those I first wanted to commend to everyone the Commission's multimedia presentation on the website you can download everything for free of course it's wonderful, I think it's fantastic certainly for those teachers in this room too I think it's quite impressive I'll start with the convener's prerogative with my first question and then we'll grab some of these as well early on you mentioned that you wanted the Commission that the Commission should be nonpartisan not bipartisan what was interesting to me is that it sounded like your staff choices were in part interested in seeing even handed so on the one hand you're looking for competent people but on the other hand in light of the perception of the Commissioners green bank I guess my question would be how might a President or a Congress develop a nonpartisan versus a bipartisan Commission is it to not worry about perception or is it to try to be balanced what I would do is I wouldn't do this actually I'm very proud of what we did we overcame a lot of this but if I were doing this I wouldn't have a prominent Democrat Republican as the Co-Chair that sends out the message this is a bipartisan never I never said it's bipartisan I would have one chair it's very hard to have two co-chairs of the Executive Director I'd rather have one and I'd have to be a non-political person I'd have to be someone who's distinguishing in the field and that could be someone from industry but without a particular I wouldn't have them be like Democrat and Republican I'd have another kind of credential I'd have to be one person there now we did it it worked fine there aren't some advantages Bob Graham and Bill Riley amazingly skilled people amazingly skilled I mean it was I learned a lot the use of the media the use of the limelight we need to vary skilled people that way and that was important but I thought on balance I would rather have one than two since there's lots of ambiguity especially if you're Executive Director I don't think you would have been a successful hiring or alternator I'm not saying that's what you get when you take someone who doesn't look like I'll tell you somebody who did a fabulous job with a commission was James Baker Jim Baker investigating the Texas Refinery VP's Texas Refinery Disaster Jim Baker's report which was a BP report not a government report Jim Baker's report BP hired to do an internal investigation of what happened I mean it is it is unbelievably tough it takes no prisoners it calls every mistake it's a really harshly written very impressive report done by Jim Baker there's no reason to think that industry people aren't going to take their tasks seriously if you pick the right kind of people who realize they're working for a public and this is a public service and as patriotic as anyone you've got to figure out who you're picking and what their job is but that report it's a great report that was an internal report it wasn't a government report I think you would hard press to pick Jim Baker because his tie is the oil and gas industry but I'll tell you he probably did a great job great so the next question I'm going to combine two of them actually to what extent was your job an exercise an investigation versus dispute resolution and procedurally how did you work to achieve consensus was the science clear most of it was just investigation it really was my staff was really just in saying their views there was some negotiation with Kennedy done with the seven commissioners on the final language of the report and for that one I can tell you, if you saw my office during that I would go in the morning at six in the morning I'd leave about 10.30 at night I would have my multiple screens I'd have my word perfect document of a chapter I'd have seven different versions of comments for my seven different commissioners and I would try to work out what I thought was consensus consensus for all of that and I would send back to them individually where I thought were the words that we had some dispute over or not and we'd work it out and they did a great job and one person I would single out and I've done this every time even when there was someone in our DC in the audience was Francis Feininger was president of our DC I think Francis Feininger is fabulous she's a fabulous member I was very worried about Francis Feininger in the organization, but on its face I thought it was a mistake to have a president of a leading advocacy organization going on my commission because she would have difficulty reaching consensus and compromises other people on what we were going to say when her organization is one which is out there with established positions and I need someone who can work with the other commissioners about what we're saying who can't talk and can't budge I was very worried about having someone with that kind of responsibility to her own organization she did a great job and she did compromise she discussed towards the end we had moments when there would be dissented opinions it looked like people were going to walk and not sign on to things but at the end you could figure out a way to write around this to satisfy a piece not on chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and that's how I planned it notice the structure of it I pushed all the recommendations to chapter 9 and that was so I could get consensus of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 earlier and I would say to them we'll deal with that in chapter 9 we'll deal with that in chapter 9 just to prove chapter 1, 2, 3 chapter 9 it's coming and then chapter 9 we had 90 versions of chapter 9 in 10 days and that's fine there's a lot to discuss about there's a lot there to debate to figure out what you're in recommendation that's different than the findings and what we should say about the future and we worked it out but that's a lot of back and forth which actually almost killed but you do deal with it and you get it done great 90 versions I counted up how many versions of chapter 9 I had I actually have to tell you now for any lawyers out there, Jim I don't have a single document from my work on the commission not one document the last thing we had to do to tell you how awful this is we started closing the commission down in November I had a group working on closing the commission starting November and that's because the commission had to do at the end what it had to do at the beginning we didn't exist two months after we handed over to the president I don't have a job like that where you don't exist that means you have to close it down that means you have to have no paper no office, no computers no blackberries, no employees as of March 11 we had to do the exact opposite we started that process that meant all these documents I had 23,000 emails myself we had hundreds of thousands of emails we had millions of pages of documents all that material had to be classified, what's confidential what's not, put it under the government registry and turned over D so we could walk away I had nothing with me and I would love to have draft I'd love to have a memo with me I have nothing the reason I have nothing is so lawyers can't come after me with discovery requests because if not, there's too much money involved but I have nothing, I have no zero which is fresh I wish I were what I wrote about this but I have none of the versions, none of the chapters zero I thought I had found out why your laptop had crashed so do you believe that the absence of subpoena power under the investigation why was the commission not given this authority? we weren't given the authority it's because we became a political football like everything else that happened we clearly shouldn't have been given the authority I thought fairly outrageous we were never given that authority I think that on balance we were really not prejudiced much at all and that was because three things, one, Barbara was really good my lawyers were very good, I had these great lawyers a lot of very young lawyers too and the other was we established credibility and then there was also this really wonderful thing and that is we had these different responsible parties all who wanted to point fingers at the other responsible parties so they were very happy to meet with us and tell us all the things that had done wrong by the other companies and so that was very helpful so how would your commission likely have played out if you had had a natural disaster without an obvious industrial source or only a partial human cause basically that's a tsunami, that's Japan it changed the analysis it just means that you have to prepare for risks created by others so you wouldn't have the part of the study which is on what were the root causes and the blowout you'd have it in terms of the preparation for the risk created by an actual cause so it's just a little bit one step away let me ask one question by the way the money issue what happened to our $15 million in mid July July 23rd I got a call from the White House on a Friday remember when they said there seems to be a problem this legislation doesn't seem to be happening we're not sure you can pay I was not a happy person because I had people I made people leave their jobs and they left their jobs I had a lot of young people who left firms and the rest to come do this and I had staff I had legal assistance I had people who couldn't carry themselves without this kind of income there's a lot of income but still it's income and so I remember I just said to the folks in the White House that that's not I'm not going to spend any time you spend your time on it President of the United States created a commission he said we were supposed to do this and so your job is to find the money it's not my job to find the money because you're plated we don't have the money but people have to be paid I remember one great discussion where he said well we'll see what we can do about the $12 million because one of the committees had approved $12 million instead of $15 million I said well no I said why $12 million President of the United States said $15 million he said well the committee I said that's not it's a committee if Congress passes $12 million they won't have to worry about it but President of the United States said $15 million Congress has passed nothing I expect $15 million we spent $10 million because I don't like to spend money unnecessary the way they do this I now learn they find the money they found some inappropriate funds in certain parts of DOE which hasn't been spent yet and they expect it who was he? did I not say? yeah so did you examine did you examine deeper the factors for failed oversight beyond that revenues to treasury we've got a whole chapter which looks at the it's quite interesting a lot of it had to do with the structure of the federal agency itself the agency in the Department of Interior was responsible for both revenue raising and oversight so they were brought together actually it was an organizational reform accomplished by James Watt in 1981 to bring the two together that way that caused the revenue part to overwhelm the oversight part they've now been separated out but also this lack of training lack of resources lack of requesting money for the over engineers and the inspectors and it's again, Democrats and Republicans both both played a role in that the lack of expertise lack of reforming the rules efforts made to reform the rules in the 1990s being down by the American Petroleum Institute over and over again we came down partly harshly to the American Petroleum Institute we came away through the state depression which was something told to us by the major oil companies who would never say it publicly and that was that when you have a group like API a trade association involved in this kind of work they tend to go to the lowest common denominator they tend to try to have rules and regulations which the least able industry can satisfy because they're trying to sort of appeal to their entire organization and I think that's led to some serious under-regulation under-resources of the federal the federal agency there are all these reports about corruption and all the rest in different offices there was something that was happening we didn't really play a major role we came with a lot of respect from a lot of individual career people who I think some of them were unfairly maligned in the effort of people to sort of find a sort of bad person rather than a faulted system would there be criminal liability if so hmm the executive order quite expressly said that nothing that commission said should provide an answer to civil liability or criminal responsibility and so we were very careful to say what we thought the root causes were what the mistakes were but not to reach a conclusion about civil liability or criminal liability the requirement executive order I don't say so a broader question in that respect because obviously you've been a litigator and you're familiar with other frameworks for fact-finding what do you think the value is of commissions like this versus others like litigation and investigating complex problems yeah I thought it was a huge advantage and that is because we're not litigating we really were trying to explain to the American people what happened and explain to policymakers what happened and to find out that's not the purpose of civil litigation or criminal litigation it's not the purpose of a congressional oversight area which is reaching for the sort of the first person willing to say something in public it's to take a step back and to tell a story and try to tell it in a very neutral matter of fact manner and you know civil trial doesn't do that you've got these two warring parties out there and there's no report that's not at the end one thing I'll tell you is that I hated that six month deadline I mean it really was just brutal we're very lucky we had that six month deadline and that's because the American people have a very short memory and if we had two years which would be the normal who would have even heard of the Gulf oil still on April 2012 and so it was a very hard unreasonable deadline but it actually served us quite well in retrospect that we had to deal with people who were still thinking about the Gulf oil still and our report was the first report out they've been a serious report since then but I think they're pretty much consistent with everything that we said but the six months I mean if I wrote people I'd say don't make it six months but I think that's crazy and I have to say we benefited for the fact it was six months so last question and then we'll have our reception the government estimates up to six million gallons of oil was released and not recovered or burned off BP claims as little as 1.6 million gallons who is more right well on that one we were closer to the government and so I think our report is consistent with that I will say that some information has come out since then which we never did evaluate but after that BP has put out which does cast some questions about the estimates at the time but at the time we thought the government based on the information we had as of December 2009 we started in 2010 we were more confident with the government but I'll say the real problem here which is again part of our recommendations is there was no flow measurements down there at all it'd be very easy to have them it doesn't cost anything but no one had put down flow in the future we'll have flow measurements down there you won't have these wild gaskets at this time you had all kinds of problems but BP wouldn't get access to some people so they had trouble measuring at the time all that stuff could be worked out in the future you know BP this is litigation now and the amount of BP is fine depends upon how much oil was filled out so BP is going to save this amount but the United States about a fine say collect depends on how much oil was filled out so they're going to say this amount but this is litigation which is different than fact-finding great well thank you very much thank you