MEX­I­CO CITY/WASH­ING­TON-The US gov­ern­ment lashed out at com­pa­nies at the heart of last year's Gulf oil spill yes­ter­day, deny­ing re­ports it had ne­go­ti­at­ed a deal with BP to re­sume drilling.The tough talk by In­te­ri­or Sec­re­tary Ken Salazar high­lights the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion's sen­si­tiv­i­ty to­wards let­ting BP-the biggest hold­er of deep­wa­ter acreage in the Gulf of Mex­i­co-drill there again a year af­ter an ex­plo­sion on the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig led to the worst off­shore oil spill in US his­to­ry.The blast killed 11 work­ers, rup­tured the com­pa­ny's un­der­wa­ter Ma­con­do well and un­leashed mil­lions of bar­rels of oil in­to the Gulf of Mex­i­co.

Since the gov­ern­ment lift­ed a ban on drilling in the re­gion in Oc­to­ber es­tab­lished af­ter the spill, BP has sub­mit­ted one per­mit ap­pli­ca­tion to drill one well, said a source who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause the re­quest was un­der re­view.British me­dia re­port­ed on the week­end that BP is in talks with Wash­ing­ton to restart drilling at ex­ist­ing fields."There is ab­solute­ly no such agree­ment nor would there be such an agree­ment" with BP to re­sume drilling, Salazar said at a brief­ing while vis­it­ing the Mex­i­can cap­i­tal.Salazar said that BP would need to go through the same re­view process to re­sume drilling as oth­er com­pa­nies.

"If they fol­low all the rules and they ac­tu­al­ly sub­mit a de­vel­op­ment plan that is deemed safe and best prac­tice, they're go­ing to get is­sued a per­mit," said Ken Med­lock, an en­er­gy fel­low at the Bak­er In­sti­tute at Rice Uni­ver­si­ty in Hous­ton."It's ob­vi­ous­ly not go­ing to be with­out scruti­ny," he said.Salazar al­so con­demned rig op­er­a­tor Transocean Ltd for grant­i­ng bonus­es based on what it said last week was an "ex­em­plary" safe­ty record in 2010, notwith­stand­ing the deaths from rig blast. One of the lead­ing mem­bers of a pres­i­den­tial pan­el on deep­wa­ter drilling said the firm "just doesn't get it".

Gulf key to BP

US le­gal probes in­to the ac­ci­dent are on­go­ing, but a pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion ear­li­er this year re­leased a re­port blam­ing the dis­as­ter on sys­temic safe­ty laps­es and a se­ries of mis­takes made by BP and its con­trac­tors.Months af­ter lift­ing a tem­po­rary ban on deep­wa­ter drilling, the bu­reau has be­gun ap­prov­ing per­mits for such ac­tiv­i­ty, clear­ing less than a dozen wells in the past few weeks.BP is a part­ner in a well op­er­at­ed by No­ble En­er­gy, which re­ceived the first per­mit since the end of the ban.

BP has sev­er­al drilling per­mit ap­pli­ca­tions pend­ing, ac­cord­ing to a pre­sen­ta­tion at a con­fer­ence last week by BHP Bil­li­ton, one of its part­ners in the projects.Last week, BP Amer­i­ca CEO Lamar McK­ay said the com­pa­ny was "work­ing con­struc­tive­ly" with reg­u­la­tors to meet new rules."We are en­cour­aged by both ver­bal and writ­ten mes­sages we have got­ten from reg­u­la­tors," McK­ay had said.The re­gion is key to the com­pa­ny's fu­ture growth. "The Gulf of Mex­i­co is by val­ue about 15 per cent of the com­pa­ny at the mo­ment, so it's im­por­tant that they drill there to re­place re­serves," In­vestec an­a­lyst Stu­art Joyn­er said.

"If you look at the com­pa­ny's rep­u­ta­tion­al is­sues, it's im­por­tant that they're seen re­sum­ing busi­ness in the Gulf of Mex­i­co along­side oth­er par­tic­i­pants. It's very much a psy­cho­log­i­cal is­sue," Joyn­er said.Transocean "just doesn't get it."Salazar was in Mex­i­co with of­fi­cials from the White House com­mis­sion that in­ves­ti­gat­ed the BP oil spill to dis­cuss off­shore drilling in the Gulf.They con­demned safe­ty bonus­es pro­vid­ed by Transocean, which said in a fil­ing last week that 2010 was its best year for safe­ty on record.

"In my own view, 2010 was prob­a­bly the great­est year of pain in terms of oil and gas de­vel­op­ment in the deep wa­ter all across the world," Salazar said, telling re­porters Transocean was "at some fault" for the spill.William Reil­ly, co-chair­man of the oil spill com­mis­sion, called Transocean's com­ments "em­bar­rass­ing"."It's been said with re­spect to the dis­as­ter that some com­pa­nies just don't get it-I think Transocean just doesn't get it," Reil­ly said.A Transocean of­fi­cial said in a state­ment the word­ing in its proxy state­ment "may have been in­sen­si­tive," but was not in­tend­ed to min­imise the deaths of its em­ploy­ees.

The US off­shore drilling reg­u­la­tor is hold­ing a hear­ing this week on the spill, but it was un­clear whether Transocean em­ploy­ees would par­tic­i­pate.Two top De­mo­c­ra­t­ic law­mak­ers yes­ter­day urged the gov­ern­ment to ex­am­ine what role work­er fa­tigue at Transocean may have played in the spill.Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Hen­ry Wax­man and Di­ana DeGette, lead­ing De­moc­rats on the House En­er­gy and Com­merce Com­mit­tee, asked for an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of whether mov­ing from 14-day to 21-day shifts on the rig may have helped to cause the mas­sive spill.

(Reuters)