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On Tuesday, hearings in the Senate focused on similar themes: what caused the well to explode, and why the blowout preventer did not work.

Three executives from the three principal companies working on the well all blamed each other.

BP (BP), which owns the well and subcontracted the other companies to work on it, said it was Transocean's job to ensure that the blowout preventer was functioning. Transocean was the owner of the drilling rig that sunk, the Deepwater Horizon, and also owned the blowout preventer.

Transocean (RIG) said the blowout preventer worked just fine in tests, and that it may have gotten jammed with concrete or other well fluids that were injected by a third contractor, causing the well to explode. Either way, argued Transocean's president, it was the faulty well, not the rig or the blowout preventer, that ultimately caused the leak.

Halliburton (HAL, Fortune 500) was the third contractor; it injected cement and other well fluids into the hole before the explosion. But a Halliburton exec said it was only following the orders of BP, which wanted a heavier fluid, known as mud, removed from the well before the well was capped with a concrete plug.

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Regulations for offshore drilling rigs largely date to 1978 and have not kept pace with technological advances, Coast Guard inspectors told a federal inquiry into the Deepwater Horizon accident Wednesday.

"The pace of the technology has outrun the current regulations," Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom told a board looking into the April 20 blast that left 11 dead and a runaway oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

Odom, who inspected the Deepwater Horizon in July 2009, said the Coast Guard regulations date to an era when offshore drilling was closer to the coastline and not as industrially complex as now.

Capt. Verne Gifford, a 23-year Coast Guard veteran, testified that the agency does not mandate inspections of things like dynamic positioning systems, which keep the floating rigs in place. Such devices weren't in use when the regulations had their last major overhaul three decades ago.

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