Gulf probe: Blowout preventer was flawed (AP)

BP Friday removed the blowout preventer valve from atop sunken oil well, a key part blamed for failing and sparking the Gulf of Mexico spill and the worst environmental disaster in US history."The Deepwater Horizon (blowout preventer) stack was successfully detached from the MC 252 wellhead at 1:20 pm (1820 GMT)," Daren Beaudo, spokesman for the British energy giant, said in a statement.

A worker on the rig which exploded in the Gulf of Mexico claimed Monday he found a fault in a key piece of safety equipment weeks before the disaster, a British television report said.Tyrone Benton told the BBC the fault on the Deepwater Horizon rig was not fixed and instead the device, known as a blowout preventer, was shut down and a second one used.He told the BBC that repairing it would have meant stopping drilling work at a time when it was costing 500,000 dollars a day to operate the rig, the source of the massive oil spill.

The oil spill at the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico was caused by a piece of drill pipe trapped in the platform's blowout preventer, which kept the device from working properly to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf, according to a report out Wednesday.

The company includes criticism of its own workers but defends the design of the well. In public hearings, it had already tried to shift some blame to rig owner Transocean Ltd.