former democratic senator bob graham fought drilling off florida. william reilly cited the anti-drilling world wildlife fund and francis mckeever in the natural resources defense council, which is supposed to carbon fuels. not a single member with a drilling engineer or expert in oil exploration type knowledge your practices. >> congressman, i would say the use of the word predictable as surprising to me because what was predictable in a few of "the wall street journal" when they wrote their first critical editorial was that we would recommend against future offshore oil and gas development, which we very definitively did not. >> you are recommending a whole new level of iraq or see top of an obviously already failed to perceive that the obvious aim and indefinitely delaying of the production of our nation energy reserves. how much -- what is the economic damage caused by this disaster? do we have a figure on that? >> we know it's in the tens of billions. >> i have an estimate here of worst-case and base case analysis of the economic damage caused b

senator bob graham, a democrat, and republican william reilly, a former head of the e.p.a., are the co-chairs, and they join me to discuss their findings. what led to your conclusion that this was both foreseeable and preventable, senator? >> first, there's been a major transformation in the off-shore oil industry, up to 1990 it was primarily shallow water drilling. since 1990, the industry have been moving in to deeper and deeper inherently riskier areas. the technology to do that has been fabulous. it's like the space program. unfortunately there wasn't a parallel development of safety required for those deeper drillings and the capacity to respond to an accident to, contain it and to limit its consequences. so this was not a surprise that that likely should occur we found that it was an avoidable and preventable tragedy. >> did you find the three main companies involved, trans-ocean, bp, halliburton were cutting corners, saving money, trying to do something in a way that was just skirting on the edge of security? >> the commission identified close to a dozen decisions, very bad decisions e

graham. i will make a brief statement and ask that my testimony be included in the record. i want to begin by saying that with respect to oil and gas we need a resource. it's vital to the economy, in itself, a way of life and a contributor to productivity, jobs, the gdp, and avoiding even more necessity to important international oil markets. this commission believes we can develop offshore oil and gas resources safely. we can do it in the deep water and i could signal that deep water is where it is. that is where the industry has been going and will be going in and even more significant way in the years to come up the country's confidence in offshore oil and gas development has been shattered to read the commission determined that the government and industry both were characterized by complacency. that has attracted a good deal of attention and some criticism. i would just say very briefly that when you have, as i learned from tony heyward, the ceo of bp the week after it took office as the