as a safety and environmental management system that exist elsewhere in the world.The government Drilling operations have rapidly increased over the years to reap financial returns, but investments in safety, containment and response equipment have lagged, the report said. Before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, no major incidents occurred in the industry and the business culture succumbed to a false sense of security, Graham and his co-chair, former Environmental Protection Agency head William K. Reilly, wrote in the report. This conclusion is applied to both the industry and the government. Federal regulatory enforcement of offshore oil rigs was overseen by the Minerals Management Service, an agency created in 1982 that also was in charge of collecting revenue from lease sales and royalty payments from oil-producing wells. This, the commission said, created a conflict of interest.From birth, MMS had a built-in incentive to promote offshore drilling in sharp tension with its mandate to ensure safe drilling and environmental protection, the report said. Compounding matters, the agency lacked resources, technical expertise and adequate regulations to ensure offshore drilling was performed safely. Shortly after the Deepwater Horizon explosion, the Department of the Interior created a new entity the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement and divided oversight of safety, revenue collection and leasing into separate offices within that agency.The report called this reorganization a significant improvement, but one that does not address the deeper issues of insulating safety oversight from pressures to increase productivity and revenue from the wells. Instead, the commission recommended the function of offshore drilling safety oversight be placed in a new, independent agency.Other commission recommendations: Create an industry safety institute to supplement government oversight, similar to the Atlanta-based Institute of Nuclear Power Operations Include risk assessment and risk management practices in regulation of offshore activity Fill gaps and current deficiencies in current law by implementing new standards to be applied throughout the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic Update standards at least every five years under the International Organization for Standardization formal review process The commissions report also addressed the American people, noting the dangerous task of energy extraction is driven by the countrys oil and gas consumption.Our national reliance on fossil fuels is likely to continue for some time and all of us reap benefits from the risks taken by the men and women working in energy exploration, Graham and Reilly wrote in the report. We owe it to them to ensure that their working environment is as safe as possible.The following video is about the sequency of failures occurred in the Deepwater Horizon BOP.Other reading matter:1.Oil and Spill Commission. Final Report of Deepwater Horizont http://oilspillcommission.gov/final-report2.U.S. Department of the Interior. Safety Recommendations http://www.doi.gov/deepwaterhorizon/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&PageID=32475Source: Safety & Health Magazine, March 11 Edition. National Safety Council.