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BP Report Blames Itself,Others on Spill09/08 07:57
Oil giant BP PLC laid much of the blame for the rig explosion and the
massive Gulf of Mexico spill on itself, other companies' workers and a complex
series of failures in an internal report released Wednesday before a key piece
of evidence has been analyzed.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Oil giant BP PLC laid much of the blame for the rig
explosion and the massive Gulf of Mexico spill on itself, other companies'
workers and a complex series of failures in an internal report released
Wednesday before a key piece of evidence has been analyzed.
In its 193-page report posted on its website, the British company described
the incident as an accident that arose from a complex and interlinked series of
mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational
implementation and team interfaces.
BP spread the blame around, and even was critical of its own workers'
conduct, but it defended some parts of the well's design and it was careful in
its assessments. It already faces hundreds of lawsuits and billions of dollars
of liabilities. In public hearings, it had already tried to shift some of the
blame to rig owner Transocean Ltd. and cement contractor Halliburton. BP was
leasing the rig from Transocean and owned the well that blew out.
While BP didn't completely absolve its engineers, the company shot down some
of the things they've been criticized for by members of Congress and others.
"Well control actions taken prior to the explosion suggest the rig crew was
not sufficiently prepared to manage an escalating well control situation," the
report said.
A Transocean lawyer said the company had no immediate comment on the report.
Shares in BP extended gains after the release of the report. The stock was
up 2 percent at 414.95 pence ($6.41) shortly after the report was made public
Wednesday.
The report was generated by a BP team led by Mark Bly, BP's head of safety
and operations.
BP's report is far from the final word on possible causes of the explosion,
as several divisions of the U.S. government, including the Justice Department,
Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement,
are also investigating.
Also, a key piece of the puzzle --- the blowout preventer that failed to
stop the oil from leaking from the well off the Louisiana coast --- was raised
from the water Saturday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had not reached a NASA
facility in New Orleans where government investigators planned to analyze it,
so those conclusions were not be part of BP's report.
The April 20 rig explosion killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons
of oil spewing from BP's undersea well.
Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas
that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as
it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.
But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know
why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the
eruption, as it was supposed to.
The details of BP's internal report were closely guarded --- and only a
short list of people saw it ahead of its release.
There were signs of problems prior to the explosion, including an unexpected
loss of fluid from a pipe known as a riser five hours before the explosion that
could have indicated a leak in the blowout preventer.
Witness statements show that rig workers talked just minutes before the
blowout about pressure problems in the well.
At first, nobody seemed too worried, workers have said. Then panic set in.
Workers called their bosses to report that the well was "coming in" and that
they were "getting mud back." The drilling supervisor, Jason Anderson, tried to
shut down the well.
It didn't work. At least two explosions turned the rig into an inferno.
Members of Congress, industry experts and workers who survived the rig
explosion have accused BP's engineers of cutting corners to save time and money
on a project that was 43 days and more than $20 million behind schedule at the
time of the blast.
In its report, BP defended the well's design, which has been criticized by
industry experts.
"The investigation team reviewed the decision to install a 97/8 in. x 7 in.
long string production casing rather than a 7 in. production liner, which would
have been tied back to the wellhead later, and concluded that both options
provided a sound basis of design."
Other findings in the BP report include:
---Flammable fluids rising up the pipe toward the Deepwater Horizon rig were
directed to a system that allowed gas to vent onto the rig, and that gas was
then circulated by the air conditioning, heating and ventilation systems. BP
says that if the crew had directed the fluids overboard, there might have been
more time to respond to the pending disaster and the consequences of the
accident may have been reduced.
---The company said the cement components for the well were stocked on
Deepwater Horizon. Halliburton shipped samples of those components to its
laboratory in advance of the date on which the components were used for the
Macondo well. Halliburton retained surplus samples from the testing program.
However, the investigation team was unable to acquire and test these actual
cement samples from the rig due to a court-ordered injunction on Halliburton to
preserve this material. BP said Halliburton declined the investigation team's
requests for equivalent samples of the cement components used on the rig. The
investigation team said it was, therefore, unable to conduct any lab testing
using Halliburton products.
---BP counters the concerns that were raised prior to the explosion by
Halliburton over the potential for a severe gas flow problem if a BP plan was
used. Halliburton and BP were at odds over a key device, known as a
centralizer, that is used as part of the process to plug a deepwater well like
the oil giant was doing at the time of the disaster. Halliburton's well design
expert testified previously he told BP officials April 15 --- five days before
the well blew --- that fewer centralizers would cause a bigger gas flow
problem. Centralizers are meant to ensure casing runs down the center of the
well bore. If casing strings are cemented off-center, there is a risk that a
channel of drilling fluid or contaminated cement will be left where the casing
contacts the oil formation, creating an imperfect seal. BP rejected
Halliburton's recommendation to use 21 centralizers. Instead, BP used six. In
its report Wednesday, BP said the decision likely did not contribute to the
cement's failure to isolate the main hydrocarbon zones or to the failure of the
shoe track cement.
In June, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's chairmen said it was
BP that made five crucial decisions before the Deepwater Horizon well blowout
that "posed a trade-off between cost and well safety." One of those decisions:
BP opted against conducting a "cement bond log" to test the integrity of a
cement job at the well. A cement bond log would have cost more than $128,000
and taken 9 to 12 hours to perform, the committee's letter notes.
In May, senior BP drilling engineer Mark Hafle told the Coast Guard and BOEM
investigators that BP didn't order the test even though more than 3,000 barrels
of mud had been lost while drilling, a possible warning sign.
The committee also criticized BP's well design, questioning its decision to
run a single string of steel casing from the seafloor to the bottom of the
well. Instead, the committee said, BP could have hung a steel tube called a
"liner" from the lower end of the well casing and installed a "tieback" on top
of the liner. The latter option would have created a better barrier against the
flow of gas, but it would have cost BP up to $10 million more and taken longer,
the committee said.
(KA)
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