Criminal Negligence: Despite Knowing It Had a Damaged Blowout Preventer, BP STILL Cut Corners By Removing the Single Most Important Safety Measure
Several weeks before the Gulf oil explosion, a key piece of safety equipment - the blowout preventer - was damaged.
As the Times of London reports:
[Mike Williams, the chief electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon, and one of the last workers to leave the doomed rig] claimed that the blowout preventer was then damaged when a crewman accidentally moved a joystick, applying hundreds of thousands of pounds of force. Pieces of rubber were found in the drilling fluid, which he said implied damage to a crucial seal. But a supervisor declared the find to be “not a big deal”, Mr Williams alleged.
UC Berkeley engineering professor Bob Bea told 60 Minutes that a damaged blowout preventer not only may lead to a catastrophic accident like the Gulf oil spill, but leads to inaccurate pressure readings, so that the well operator doesn't know the real situation, and cannot keep the rig safe.
Bea also said that - despite the damage - BP ordered the rig operator to ignore an even more critical safety measure. Specifically, BP ordered the rig operator to remove the "drilling mud" - a heavy liquid used to keep oil and gas from escaping - before the well was sealed.
The importance of drilling mud is well-known. For example:
Frank Patton, a drilling engineer for the government's Mineral Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, told a separate inquiry in Kenner, La., that drilling mud "is the most important thing in safety for your well."
And numerous eyewitnesses have confirmed that drilling mud was removed too early.
For example, as the Times-Picayune reports:
Bickford's client, who was working immediately next to the drill floor at the time of the explosion, claims the rig operators had already started pumping mud out of the riser....
"We had set the bottom cement plug," the [whistleblower] said. "At that point the BOP stack, the blowout preventer, was tested. I don't know the results of that test. However, it must have passed because at that point they elected to displace the marine riser from the vessel to the sea floor. They displaced all the mud out to the riser preparing to unlatch from the well two days later. So they displaced it with sea water."
***
Bickford said his client saw mud being pumped out of the riser and onto boats that normally collect the mud in tanks. Another lawyer, Stuart Smith, said he represents fishermen who witnessed the explosion and saw the mud being extracted beforehand.
3 comments:
April 20 hmmm.
11 deaths
the platform was sunk after the fire had been extinguished.
order out of Chaos.
Goldman Sachs shorted all stocks related to the Gulf of Mexico.
Reuters - Halliburton agrees to buy Boots & Coots (Oil Cleanup Company) 10 days before Oil Spill
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63907A20100410
Reuters - Halliburton performed cementing work on the well just before it ruptured
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1922613220100519
Halliburton consulted a local B.C. man about using zeolite to make "lightweight concrete". There is only one way to break down concrete that uses zeolite as a pozzalin. Expose it to salt.
BP filled the pipe with saltwater after it had been advised to fill it with drilling mud.
The rig that blew up was over-insured by $270 million. Fascinating coincidence!
Hmm. Did BP hold dead peasant insurance on the rig workers who died?
Via: Politico:
Eighteen Democratic senators have asked the Justice Department to investigate the operator of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig after the company announced it would dole out $1 billion to shareholders as oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico.
Transocean, according to the letter from the senators, plans to distribute dividends to its stockholders. And the senators are concerned that the payments might make it harder to collect liability payouts related to the massive oil spill.
Transocean, according to the letter, also says it will make a $270 million profit on the insurance policy for the rig. And the senators claim the rig was insured for more than it was worth
May 27, 2010 5:55 AM
http://pesn.com/2010/05/05/9501645_No_joke--Goldman_Sachs_shorted_TransOcean/
What was Halliburton's role in US oil spill?
By David Usborne in New York
Sunday, 30 May 2010
reuters
Tim Probert, Halliburton's president of global business, appears before the Senate
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Shares in Halliburton, the world's second-largest energy services company once headed by former US vice-president Dick Cheney, slid in trading on Friday, in part because of the new six-month moratorium on offshore drilling projects imposed last week by President Barack Obama.
But investors have had other reasons to feel concern for the fortunes of Halliburton. As the investigation into the BP oil rig explosion accelerates, new information has been surfacing in congressional hearings in Washington pointing to possible problems with the casings that were put around the bore hole in the sea bed and the cementing that is critical to sealing it up.
Halliburton did the cementing at the well, under contract to BP. It was to inject the cement to seal the casing in the bore hole to make any seepage of gas and oil impossible, and insert the cement plug that would have allowed BP to return at a later date to begin production. Last August, Halliburton was involved in the cementing of a well in the Timor Sea off the coast of Australia that similarly blew out, sending thousands of gallons into the ocean.
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Even within days of the US tragedy, which left 11 men dead and unleashed the worst oil spill America has ever seen, investigators were focusing on the type of cement used – it had been infused with nitrogen – and tests that were done to ensure it had set properly. BP investigators told members of Congress that in the hours before the blast, a "fundamental mistake" may have been made in moving forward with placing the plug even when pressure tests had shown a "very large abnormality".
The notion that blame for the blast could eventually be put on Halliburton might be tempting for BP. Indeed, at early hearings, BP seemed to point fingers both at Halliburton and at Transocean, the owner of the rig, prompting a rebuke from President Obama.
From the start, Halliburton's lawyers have insisted that its men on the rig were simply following specifications and instructions from BP. In other words, if the cement does turn out to have been at least partly responsible for the tragedy, BP is "bound to hold Halliburton harmless", as one of the lawyers told Congress last week. Transocean has made a similar case that as the owner of the lease on the well, BP must be ultimately responsible.
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