"BP, Halliburton and Transocean are major companies operating throughout the Gulf, and the evidence is that they are in need of top-to-bottom reform," said William Reilly, co-chair of the presidential oil spill commission.

"Emphatically, there was not a culture of safety on that rig... We know a safety culture must be led from the top and permeate a company," he said as he opened the second day of a hearing into the April 20 explosion on a BP-leased drilling rig off the Louisiana coast.

Reilly's co-chair on the panel, Senator Bob Graham, said the three companies had "a culture that did not promote safety, and that culture failed.

"Leaders did not take serious risks seriously enough, did not identify risks that proved to be fatal," he said.

The seven-member panel was set up by US President Barack Obama six months ago and tasked with finding out what caused the accident, which killed 11 rig workers and sparked a massive oil spill that is still impacting the Gulf environment and economy.

Reilly blamed the rig explosion on a "culture of complacency" that ran through the three firms, and said all three had made a "suite of bad decisions" as they worked to drill a well more than a mile beneath the surface of the Gulf.

"There appeared to be a rush to completion of the Macondo well and one has to ask where the drive came from that made people determine they couldn't wait for sound cement or the right centralizers," said Reilly.

BP shares were up more than two percent Tuesday after the panel heard on the first day of the hearings that there was no evidence that BP and its partners had sacrificed safety for profits, and the commission's lead investigator said blame for the accident should not rest solely with BP.

Lead investigator Fred Bartlit said his probe team's findings mostly concurred with an internal report of the accident by BP in September, which placed a large share of the blame on Transocean, owner of the drilling rig, and Halliburton, which cemented the well with slurry it knew to be faulty.

But on Tuesday, the hearing shifted its focus back to BP.

Outside experts, from major oil, drilling and engineering firms, questioned the soundness of a decision by BP to seal the well with a single cement plug placed 3,000 feet (914 meters) beneath the surface instead of the usual 300 feet (91 meters) down.

Others wondered why BP had changed its plan for sealing up the well after drilling was completed three times in the days leading up to the accident, with some saying it indicated a lack of vigilance and focus.

"There was a series of almost inexplicable failures in the hours leading up to the disaster. There was a series of actions which are difficult to explain," said Graham. Reilly called BP, Halliburton and Transocean "laggards" on safety issues, and expressed the hope that they would learn good practice from other firms in the industry, who testified on safety matters before the commission on Tuesday.

"BP has been notoriously challenged on matters of process and safety," Reilly said.

"We've heard from the laggards... Today we hope to hear from the leaders and look forward to look at companies that learned from their own crises and disasters and rose to become standard bearers."

The seven-member commission has to present Obama with a report on the root causes of the Gulf oil disaster by January 11.

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