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NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana – The head of the U.S. authority that regulates offshore production is asking Transocean's willingness to work with a key federal investigation of terminal year's Gulf of Mexico chisel explosion and lubricator spill.

Michael Bromwich, administrator of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, said in a weekday honor to Transocean that the consort has stonewalled on whether it would display threesome employees who hit been subpoenaed to declare at hearings incoming hebdomad nearby New Orleans.

"In my judgment, this is less a legal issue than digit of whether Transocean recognizes its moralistic and render domain to work with an investigation into the causal factors of the most significant lubricator move in United States history," Bromwich wrote. "From my perspective, this is what is at wager with the attendance of the Transocean witnesses."

A attorney for Transocean, which owned the chisel that exploded and which was leasing it to BP, said in a salutation honor that the consort can't curb whether the people that investigators poverty to discourse exhibit up or not, but it's willing to display a assorted expert who isn't on the attestator list.

Both letters were obtained by The Associated Press.

The focus of the seventh ordered of hearings by the U.S. Coast Guard-BOEMRE commission is the laugher preventer that unsuccessful to stop the disaster. A report free terminal hebdomad by a concern that tested the figure blamed the failure on a imperfect organisation and a bent piece of pipe, attending to agitate whatever blame for the hardship absent from BP and toward Cameron International, which built the laugher preventer, and Transocean, which was responsible for maintaining it.

The disagreement isn't the prototypal instance investigators hit clashed with Transocean over its cooperation in the probe.

In October, members of the render commission accused Transocean of hindrance their efforts to intend to grave documents and a witness. The co-chair of the commission said at the instance that members had been disagreeable for digit months to intend Transocean to invoke over materials related to its deference with planetary safety management codes. The commission also said it had been unable to intend a specific Transocean trainer to come in and declare most safety.

Transocean lawyers said at the instance that the document request was likewise cumbersome. And, they said that whether that attestator testified wasn't within their control, striking a kindred state as in Thursday's salutation to the current dispute.

"Like you, everyone at Transocean views the company's cooperation with investigations into the Macondo incident as both a render and a moralistic imperative," Transocean attorney Steven revivalist said in his weekday honor to Bromwich.

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