Failures by several parties led to the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, British energy group BP concluded in the results of an internal inquiry published yesterday, accepting some of the blame.

"No single factor caused the Macondo well tragedy. Rather, a sequence of failures involving a number of different parties led to the explosion and fire which killed 11 people and caused widespread pollution in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this year," BP said in a summary of the report.

BP said decisions made by "multiple companies and work teams", including itself, contributed to the accident which arose from "a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design" and communication breakdowns.