THE three oil industry titans behind the Gulf of Mexico spill all sought to blame one another under questioning from senators as troops fanned out along the Louisiana coastline to limit the damage caused by the environmental disaster.

With at least four million gallons of oil now polluting the gulf, the executives of BP America, which owned the well, Transocean, which owned the sunken Deepwater Horizon rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well, were trying to avoid direct blame for the April 20 incident.

As the energy and natural resources committee hearing got under way, Senate staffers joked it could be subtitled 'Scenes from an Execution'. But some of the worst damage may have been done by the executives themselves as the three companies all tried to shift the responsibility.

In his opening statement, Jeff Bingaman, the New Mexico Democrat who heads the committee, suggested a fatal combination of errors. “We will likely discover that there was a cascade of failures technical, human and regulatory,” he said.

BP America's chief executive, Lamar McKay, blamed Transocean, the operator of the rig. Transocean's Steven Newman, in his testimony, said BP was calling the shots on the rig. He rejected any suggestion of a failure of the blowout preventer, which is supposed to stop a blowout. That pointed the finger at Halliburton, which was brought in to cement the lining of the well, in effect sealing off the reservoir.

— The Guardian, London