BP has released its internal investigative report on the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and — spoiler! — it "deflects attention away from BP," pinning more responsibility on Transocean and Halliburton. Maybe that's true? Or maybe it's just standard corporate PR.

Unless you're an engineer who can call bullshit when necessary, it's hard to view BP's investigative findings ("those other stupid companies did it") as anything other than a corporate foot-massage for shareholders. Sure, BP's crack investigative team accepts some blame, for tiny things such as "misreading pressure data that indicated a blowout was imminent." Misreading the apocalpyse, whatever. Happens every day.

But the report's framing seems curious — as in, it's framed around the parts most likely to make other companies look terrible. The New York Times writes:

The report, which took about four months to complete, focuses less on decisions that BP made in designing and drilling the well than on what rig workers, mostly from Transocean, did after the blowout occurred.

Here's the 193-page report, if you'd like to see for yourself. But if you only have time to read one difficult book-length report on the oil spill this year, maybe hold out for one that isn't shadowed by, you know, the biggest conflict-of-interest ever. Was BP really only responsible for one of the eight causes of this disaster, as this report claims? We'd like a non-BP second opinion.

[Image via AP]