Plenty Of Blame

.

September 08, 2010

BP: Multiple companies, teams played role in oil disaster

Posted: 11:56 AM ET

CNN Wire Staff

Faulty cementing, a misread pressure test and an improperly maintained blowout preventer all contributed to the April 20 explosion that uncorked the worst oil spill in U.S. history, BP's investigation of the disaster concluded Wednesday.

BP said its team aboard the doomed oil rig Deepwater Horizon "incorrectly accepted" results of a negative pressure test aboard the rig before the blast, but the company's internal report assigns much of the blame to rig owner Transocean and cementing contractor Halliburton. The three companies have repeatedly pointed fingers at each other since the explosion, which killed 11 workers and resulted in an estimated 4.9 million barrels (205 million gallons) of oil spilling into the Gulf.


(CNN) -- Oil company BP shouldered some responsibility for the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster Wednesday after an internal investigation of the spill, but assigned much of the blame to contractors Halliburton and Transocean.

Faulty cementing, a misread pressure test and an improperly maintained blowout preventer all contributed to the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers aboard the Deepwater Horizon drill rig and uncorked the worst oil spill in U.S. history, BP's nearly 200-page report on the disaster concluded.

"The team did not identify any single action or inaction that caused this accident," BP's report states. "Rather, a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident. Multiple companies, work teams and circumstances were involved over time."

The company said its team aboard the doomed platform "incorrectly accepted" results of a negative pressure test on the rig before the blast and mistakenly rejected equipment that cement contractor Halliburton requested to complete the well's casing. But as BP executives have done in the past, the report spread a large portion of the blame to Halliburton and to rig owner Transocean, which blasted the findings as "a self-serving report" that tries to distract attention from BP's own flawed well design.

"In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk -- in some cases, severely," Transocean said in a statement issued Wednesday morning.

Halliburton had no immediate response to the BP report, but one of its engineers also criticized BP's well design during an August hearing by the Coast Guard-Interior Department board probing the disaster. And Rep. Ed Markey, the head of a congressional subcommittee also investigating the spill, said the report was no "mea culpa" on BP's part.

"Of their own eight key findings, they only explicitly take responsibility for half of one," said Markey, D-Massachusetts. "BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece."

BP, Halliburton and Transocean have repeatedly pointed fingers at each other since the explosion, which resulted in an estimated 4.9 million barrels (205 million gallons) of oil spilling into the Gulf over 87 days. In Wednesday's report, BP said its team aboard the rig misread a critical pressure test in the hours before the explosion.

"In retrospect, pressure readings and volume bled at the time of the negative-pressure test were indications of flow-path communication with the reservoir, signifying that the integrity of these barriers had not been achieved," the report states. "The Transocean rig crew and BP well site leaders reached the incorrect view that the test was successful and that well integrity had been established."

Neither of BP's well site leaders, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, have appeared before the investigative board. Kaluza has invoked his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, while Vidrine was excused for medical reasons.

Wednesday's report found weaknesses in the design of the cementing job that allowed oil and gas to burst out of the well, and states that BP investigators found signs of "potential weaknesses in the testing regime and maintenance management system" for the rig's blowout preventer -- the massive fail-safe device that failed to shut down the well after the explosion.

BP's investigation found Halliburton used a "likely unstable" cement mix that was not fully tested before it was used. Mark Bly, BP's head of safety and operations, said in a video accompanying the report, that Halliburton "did not conduct comprehensive lab tests that could've identified potential problems with the cement."

But he added, "We believe that BP and Halliburton working together should have better identified and addressed the issues underlying the cement job."

"Improved technical assurance, risk management, and management of change by BP personnel could have lead to awareness and better decisions regarding acceptance and implementation of the cement proposal," Bly said.

The conclusions follow July remarks by outgoing BP CEO Tony Hayward, who said that the disaster "was the result of multiple equipment errors and human error involving many companies." Bob Dudley, who is replacing Hayward, said Wednesday's report "makes that conclusion even clearer."

"We deeply regret this event. We have sought throughout to step up to our responsibilities. We are determined to learn the lessons for the future and we will be undertaking a broad-scale review to further improve the safety of our operations," Dudley said in a statement accompanying the report.

But Halliburton engineer Jesse Gagliano testified in August that he warned BP that its well design was inadequate. Appearing before the investigative board, Gagliano said he told BP that the well design did not have enough centralizers -- devices used to position the cement casing around the well bore.

The design called for six centralizers, but Gagliano recommended 21 because of the "severe gas flow problem" in the well. BP engineer Brian Morel replied by e-mail that "It was too late and we had to deal with what we had on the rig," Gagliano testified.

In addition, e-mails from BP engineers, released by a congressional committee in June, suggest that the oil company had its own concerns about the well. Drilling engineer Brian Morel called it a "nightmare well which has everyone all over the place," while Mark Hafle called it "a crazy well."

Hafle told the investigative board in May that BP was confident about the safeguards on its Gulf well. But BP reported problems controlling the well and won a delay in testing the blowout preventer in March, according to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Committee leaders said the documents suggest BP took a cost-cutting and speedy approach to drilling the troubled well.

Both Hafle and Morel invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination during the most recent round of hearings by the investigative board.

Eventually, 15 more centralizers were shipped to the rig. But BP's well team "erroneously believed that they had received the wrong centralizers" and decided not to use them, according to Wednesday's report.

Nevertheless, the decision not to use 21 centralizers "likely did not contribute to the cement's failure to isolate the main hydrocarbon zones or to the failure of the shoe track cement."

BP's report faults Transocean's crew for failing "to recognize and act on the influx of hydrocarbons into the well until the hydrocarbons were in the riser and rapidly flowing to the surface."

"Indications of influx with an increase in drill pipe pressure are discernible in real-time data from approximately 40 minutes before the rig crew took action to control the well," the report states. "The rig crew's first apparent well control actions occurred after hydrocarbons were rapidly flowing to the surface."

And the report states that service records for the blowout preventer and the condition of critical components "suggest the lack of a robust Transocean maintenance management system" for the device, which is meant to shut down the well in case of trouble.

In its response, Transocean said BP made decisions that increased the chances that flammable gas would come flowing out of the well. It also failed to run a common test on the integrity of the cement or employing a "lockdown sleeve" that would have helped contain the eventual blowout, it said.

The company said its own investigation was still going on.

Don Van Nieuwenhuise, an oil geoscience professor at the University of Houston, said the report points "a clear finger" at Halliburton in particular. But the report isolates several points at which someone should have said, "Hey, stop," as he put it.

Van Nieuwenhuise told CNN's "American Morning" that BP's representatives on the rig usually have "the ultimate decision," but added, "Someone from Transocean, if they suspect something is wrong, they certainly have the right to speak up and contradict the company man."