September 9, 2010

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/7192813.html

By BRETT CLANTON and JENNIFER DLOUHY
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 9, 2010, 7:03AM

BP on Wednesday laid out its most detailed analysis yet on possible causes of the Deepwater Horizon accident in April, taking particular aim at mistakes by contractors on the doomed rig while claiming only a limited role in the disaster.

In a much-anticipated report on its internal investigation, BP reiterated that a “complex and interlinked series” of equipment failures and human error led to the deadly incident and subsequent oil spill but also offered new explanations about what went wrong.

Key contractors quickly dismissed BP’s report as inaccurate and one-sided.

One key finding seemed to debunk the prevailing theory on where the original leak occurred deep within the Macondo well that set the disaster in motion. Rather than traveling up a narrow channel outside the well’s interior pipe casing, volatile gas likely entered the casing itself through a series of barriers at the bottom of the well called a shoe track, the company said.

That is one of eight problems BP cited as possible causes of the April 20 accident, which killed 11 workers and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

The BP team also said crew members missed clear warning signs that gas had seeped into the well, that worker errors and defects in the rig’s design let gas ignite at the rig’s surface, and that problems with a massive blowout preventer on the seafloor may have kept it from sealing the well after the blast.

Though BP personnel are directly implicated in just one of the eight factors, company investigators stressed the report was not intended to be the final word on the subject, nor an accounting of legal responsibility.

First of several reports

“Our purpose was not to apportion blame or liability but rather to learn, recommend areas for improvement and share lessons with others,” said Mark Bly, the BP safety chief who led the investigation.

Compiled over a four-month period, the 234-page report drew upon interviews with BP and non-BP employees on the Deepwater Horizon and BP well engineers in Houston, company documents, real-time well data transmitted from the rig to shore and testimony in public hearings about the accident.

While about 10 other independent and government investigations continue, BP’s is the first report on a start-to-finish examination of the tragedy.

In it, investigators repeatedly homed in on the failure of cement barriers in the well, a focus that shifts attention to the work done by the cement contractor Halliburton Co. In particular, the team alleged that the oil field services giant failed to conduct adequate testing of the specific cement slurry used at the well.

The nitrogen-injected foam cement that was used at the site is susceptible to breaking down over time, especially if it is contaminated, BP’s Kent Corser said at a briefing with reporters in Washington. This is what the team believes happened to cement in the thin area called the annulus between the pipelike casing at the well’s center and the surrounding rock.

Once in the annulus, hydrocarbons likely entered the casing through the shoe track, a final section of casing at the bottom of the well where two mechanical valves and cement are installed to seal off the reservoir. BP speculates that both the valves and cement failed, allowing hydrocarbons to pass through the valves and up the casing.

Could deflect blame

The theory, if true, could deflect blame from BP’s Macondo well design criticized by some experts as risky and shift it to contractors including Halliburton and Transocean, which owned and operated the rig under contract with BP.

It also could take heat off BP engineers for a much-scrutinized decision to install fewer devices called centralizers than Halliburton had recommended for a section of well casing, despite risks that the smaller number could cause an uneven cement job and gas flow in the well.

“Based on the report, it would appear unlikely that the well design contributed to the incident, as the investigation found that the hydrocarbons flowed up the production casing through the bottom of the well,” BP’s outgoing CEO, Tony Hayward, said in a statement.

Contractors don’t agree

Halliburton said Wednesday it remains confident in the work it did on the Macondo well, noting it was done according to BP specifications, and criticized the report for “substantial omissions and inaccuracies.”

Transocean called the document a “self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP’s fatally flawed well design.”

While the shoe track explanation is plausible, BP still had responsibility for verifying the cement job was sound, said Darryl Bourgoyne, director of the Petroleum Engineering Research Lab at Louisiana State University.

“From my view, they were the operators of the well,” he said. “If somebody working on their behalf wasn’t doing something right, then it’s the same as them not.”

BP investigators said a bad cement job, in and of itself, shouldn’t have caused the lethal escape of gas from the well. They also faulted workers on the rig for not going through a formal risk assessment after the cementing.

That kind of on-the-spot analysis might have prompted workers to run a cement bond log, considered the gold standard for well-cement testing, which might have detected problems sooner. BP had planned to run the test and even had a crew from Schlumberger on board to perform it, but sent them home the day of the blast after deciding the test was unnecessary.

Pressure test ignored

The Bly Report is also critical of two BP well site leaders and Transocean crew on the rig who “incorrectly accepted” the results of a crucial test of the well’s integrity on the day of the accident. Though the negative pressure test showed pressure on a drill pipe when it should have been zero, the crew went forward with a procedure to replace heavy drilling mud in the well with much lighter seawater.

Investigators said rig data shows a 40-minute gap from the first indication of a gas influx to the first attempt by the crew to bring the well back under control. But by then, it was too late. Minutes later, the first of two explosions occurred.

The BP team insisted that had the flow of hydrocarbons been caught before it got into the riser pipe and gas started flowing onto the Deepwater Horizon, rig workers might may have been able to avert disaster.

But, at the end of the day, BP can only blame others so much for the accident, said Nansen G. Saleri, CEO of Houston-based Quantum Reservoir Impact, an oil and gas industry consultant.

“The elephant in the room,” he said, “is that collectively and ultimately the responsibility lies with BP.”

brett.clanton@chron.com

jennifer.dlouhy@chron.com

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/7192390.html

DISASTER IN THE GULF
BP report sets inquiry agenda – for now
Company gets out in front on the debate over causes of rig blowout
By MONICA HATCHER
Copyright 2010 Houston Chronicle
Sept. 8, 2010, 10:32PM

In releasing the first detailed report on the causes of the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP laid down a battleground for years of legal and political skirmishes, and may have provided itself some cover against the most severe civil and criminal penalties.

In the highly anticipated report released Wednesday, the British oil giant acknowledged limited responsibility for the myriad missteps that led to the April 20 blowout at its Macondo well, shifting most of the blame to contractors who analysts say will now be forced to respond on BP’s terms.

The report outlines in 234 pages the results of a four-month investigation that identified and analyzed eight key factors in the disaster and includes recommendations for preventing future accidents.

“BP has set the battleground, now Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron are going to have to respond initially on the turf that BP has selected,” said Kent Moors, a professor at the Graduate Center for Social and Public Policy at Duquesne University and president of ASIDA, an international oil and gas consulting firm.

Three more companies

Transocean owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon under contract with BP. Halliburton performed well cementing that BP identifies as a trigger to the chain of events that destroyed the rig, killed 11 men and set off a 4.9-million-barrel oil spill in the Gulf. Cameron built the blowout preventer that failed as the last line of defense against disaster.

By getting out in front of the debate, Moors said, BP framed the discussion going forward, at least until others reply with findings from their own investigations.

Role of others

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the influential House Committee on Energy and Commerce, acknowledged as much in saying the report “raises many questions” about the role of others in the accident.

But he also accused BP of glossing over its own role.

Yet BP also may benefit from demonstrating to the federal government that the company is acting in good faith by investigating the accident and helping regulators and industry find ways to prevent recurrences, said Tracy Hester, assistant professor and the director of the Environment, Energy & Natural Resource Center at the University of Houston Law Center.

“That is important in dealing with government agencies, because responding in good faith could play an important role in assessing civil penalties and in the government’s decision to ultimately charge anyone,” Hester said. A similar internal investigation into BP’s 2005 Texas City refinery explosion was important in shaping enforcement decisions after that event as well, he said.

While the findings brought few surprises to analysts, academics and attorneys closely following the case, BP was nonetheless clobbered by critics for failing to take more responsibility.

Nancy Leveson, a specialists in systems safety at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has investigated hundreds of major accidents, including ones on spacecraft and oil refineries, said expecting anything else from BP would have been naive. She likened the findings to an incident report written by someone in a car crash who was told he, not his insurance company, would be on the hook for damages.

‘Astounding liability’

“BP faces astounding liability. Everyone in the world is suing them, including other oil companies. It’s just impossible for a company to investigate itself under these circumstances,” Leveson said.

The report doesn’t address accusations leveled against the company and doesn’t discuss any role BP management may have played in the decision-making. Rather than a defense, the report should be seen an explanation of the mechanical and physical failures that caused the accident, Leveson said.

“The lawsuits are going to be about the things that are left out of this report, who did what,” Leveson said.

Halliburton said BP’s findings had a number of “substantial omissions and inaccuracies.” And a spokesman for Transocean called the report “self-serving” and an attempt “to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP’s fatally flawed well design.”

During a three-hour technical briefing Wednesday in Washington, BP safety and operations chief Mark Bly, who headed the investigation, denied the report was written to diffuse blame. “We wanted to understand what happened and why,” he said.

Fall on their own sword?

But Steve Gordon, a veteran maritime lawyer in Houston who represents the family of rig worker Karl Kleppinger Jr., who died on the Deepwater Horizon, and eight survivors, said BP missed an opportunity to speed litigation for those it said it would make whole.

“Is it naive to think BP would have accepted some blame when you’ve been told for more than 140 days, ‘Do not worry, America, we will get to the bottom of what happened and admit fault where we were at fault and make recompense?’? ” Gordon said. “I don’t expect them to fall on their own sword, but truly analyze how BP messed up.”

No special weight

A joint Coast Guard- Interior Department board investigating the accident will take into consideration the Bly Report as it looks for root causes but won’t give it special weight, Coast Guard Lt. Sue Kerver said.

“They would use that as they would any other piece of evidence and see if there’s any information they needed to glean or any other folks they need to bring in and talk to as a result of that,” she said.

Eban Burnham-Snyder, a spokesman for Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., who chairs a congressional panel investigating the oil spill, said the congressman is reviewing the report and checking it against information the committee has already received from BP and elsewhere.

“If we find cause to ask additional questions relevant to the investigation, we will do so,” he said.

Brett Clanton and Tom Fowler contributed from Houston and Jennifer A. Dlouhy from Washington.

monica.hatcher@chron.com

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http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/energy/7192389.html

Oil giant’s critics are not impressed
They wanted it to accept more blame for blast
By PURVA PATEL
Sept. 8, 2010, 10:33PM

Lawmakers and environmental groups blasted BP’s report on its disastrous well blowout as self-serving, saying the British company pointed fingers at others rather than accept responsibility.

Particularly critical was Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and environment.

“This report is not BP’s mea culpa,” Markey said. “Of their own eight key findings, they only explicitly take responsibility for half of one. BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece.”

In a briefing with reporters in Washington Wednesday, BP’s Mark Bly, who headed the investigation, dismissed allegations that the report was intended to diffuse blame.

“We were not about proportioning or apportioning fault or blame,” Bly said. “I know there may be people who may want to understand that from us. We understand our work may be used for those reasons, but that’s not what we’ve done. We wanted to understand what happened and why.”

More objective?

Markey and others said they expect that investigations by Congress and federal agencies will be more objective and carry more weight.

P&J Oyster Co. owner Sal Sunseri, whose New Orleans-based business suffered after he was forced to stop shucking oysters in June, said he wasn’t sure how objective BP’s self-reporting could be but added that there’s enough blame to go around.

“Everyone involved in the production and operation of that rig is responsible,” he said. “Is BP’s report accurate? I don’t know. All I know is my business is directly affected, and I’m not able to do what I regularly do.”

Environmental groups also gave little quarter.

“This report is more concerned with calming BP’s shareholders than taking responsibility for its actions,” said Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity.

One group cared less about the finger-pointing and more about future incidents.

“We need to make sure BP, the federal government and the entire oil and gas industry have far better plans and practices in place to respond to their mistakes,” said Aaron Viles, campaign director for the Gulf Restoration Network, a New Orleans-based environmental group.

No comment by API

Spokesmen for two major trade groups, the American Petroleum Institute in Washington and the International Association of Drilling Contractors in Houston, declined to comment on BP’s report.

Mihael Ivic, owner of Misho’s Oyster Co. in San Leon, saw his oyster inventory drop to the lowest level in 10 years after the spill. But he doesn’t think BP deserves all the blame.

“There is probably guilt on each side,” said Ivic, who says compensation payments from BP have helped keep his business afloat. “I really don’t think we should bad-mouth BP because the same thing could happen to any other company. Now that everything is over, they are willing to cover all consequences.”

Reporters Matthew Tresaugue and Jennifer A. Dlouhy contributed to this report.

purva.patel@chron.com

Special thanks to Richard Charter

Press Release: NIH to launch Gulf oil spill health study

The National Institutes of Health will launch a multi-year study this fall to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf region. The Gulf Worker Study, announced by NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., in June, is in response to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Collins pledged $10 million in NIH funding for the study’s initial phases.

That’s fine to study it, but what about the people that are currently EXPERIENCING the health impacts; how about $10 Mill to help them and by the way, stop spraying the dispersants in coastal areas (which is still happening under cover of darkness using Defense Dept. airplanes). DV

To read the entire press release, please see http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/releases/2010/gulf-study.cfm.

______________________

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:

Robin Mackar, NIH/NIEHS
(919) 541-0073

07 Sep 2010: NIH to Launch Gulf Oil Spill Health Study
BP will provide additional funds for research
The National Institutes of Health will launch a multi-year study this fall to look at the potential health effects from the oil spill in the Gulf region. The Gulf Worker Study, announced by NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., in June, is in response to the largest oil spill in U.S. history, caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Dr. Collins pledged $10 million in NIH funding for the study’s initial phases.

To help expedite the launch of the study, BP will contribute an additional $10 million to NIH for this and other important health research. The BP funding will come through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GRI). The GRI is a ten-year, $500 million independent research program established by BP to better understand and mitigate the environmental and potential health effects of the Gulf spill. The NIH will have full autonomy regarding the distribution of the $10 million, with input from external scientific experts in environmental health and who are familiar with the Gulf region.

“It was clear to us that we need to begin immediately studying the health of the workers most directly involved in responding to this crisis,” said Collins. “The donation from BP will help speed our work with CDC, EPA, and other federal agencies, academia, as well as state and local partners to carry out this important study.” Collins asked the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the NIH, to lead the research project.

The study will focus on workers’ exposure to oil and dispersant products, and potential health consequences such as respiratory, neurobehavioral, carcinogenic, and immunological conditions. The study is also expected to evaluate mental health concerns and other oil spill-related stressors such as job loss, family disruption, and financial uncertainties.

“Clean-up workers are likely to be the most heavily exposed of all population groups in the Gulf Coast region,” said Dale Sandler, Ph.D., chief of the Epidemiology Branch at NIEHS and lead researcher on the study. “We plan to enroll workers with varying levels of exposure. For example, we hope to recruit workers involved in oil burning, skimming and booming, equipment decontamination, wildlife cleanup, and also those with lower exposure such as shoreline clean-up workers. We’ll also recruit some people who completed the worker safety training, but did not have the opportunity to do any clean-up work. They will be our study controls.”

Sandler added, “What we learn from this study may help us prepare for future incidents that put clean-up workers at risk.”

The current focus of NIEHS is to ensure that the Gulf communities most affected by the oil spill have a say in the study’s design and implementation, as well as input into future research directions. The NIEHS is hosting webinars and other community engagement activities to obtain input.

“Community involvement and participation is critical to the success of this study,” said Linda Birnbaum, Ph.D., director of NIEHS and the National Toxicology Program.
NIH and the Department of Health and Human Services have had a continuous presence in the Gulf since the explosion occurred. The NIEHS Worker Education and Training Program (WETP) used its 24 years of experience preparing people for hazardous conditions to contribute to training more than 100,000 workers in the Gulf so they could safely clean up the oil spill. The WETP also distributed thousands of pocket-sized training booklets in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese, so workers have the information they need to protect themselves. The WETP materials are available at http://niehs.nih.gov/wetp/index.cfm?id=2495.

The NIEHS supports research to understand the effects of the environment on human health and is part of NIH. For more information on environmental health topics, visit our Web site at http://www.niehs.nih.gov. Subscribe to one or more of the NIEHS news lists (http://www.niehs.nih.gov/news/releases/newslist/index.cfm) to stay current on NIEHS news, press releases, grant opportunities, training, events, and publications.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) – The Nation’s Medical Research Agency – includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov .

Special thanks to Richard Charter

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/09/5_key_human_errors_colossal_me.html

New Orleans, LA

Published: Sunday, September 05, 2010, 6:00 AM Updated: Sunday, September 05, 2010, 3:08 PM
David Hammer, The Times-Picayune

A string of mistakes, first by people, then by a supposedly fail-safe machine, sealed the fates of 11 rig workers and led to the fouling of the Gulf of Mexico and hundreds of miles of its coastline.

More than 100 hours of testimony before a federal investigative panel, two dozen congressional hearings and several internal company reports have brought the genesis of the spill into sharp focus. The record shows there was no single fatal mistake or cut corner. Rather, five key human errors and a colossal mechanical failure combined to form a recipe for unprecedented disaster.
e rig’s malfunctioning blowout preventer ultimately failed, but it was needed only because of human errors. Those errors originated with a team of BP engineers in Houston who knew they had an especially tough well, one rig workers called “the well from hell.” Despite the well’s orneriness, the engineers repeatedly chose to take quicker, cheaper and ultimately more dangerous actions, compared with available options. Even when they acknowledged limited risks, they seemed to consider each danger in a vacuum, never thinking the combination of bad choices would add up to a total well blowout.

Tens of thousands of offshore wells have been drilled without incident. Drill teams often face difficult conditions miles down in a hole, but they use a battery of tests and equipment to proceed safely. That’s why the first time BP went with the less-than-safest option — choosing a well structure with fewer barriers against kicks of gas — nobody batted an eye.

Plenty of wells had used a similar structure of metal tube linings. Halliburton, the cementing contractor, simply recommended more devices called centralizers to make that design safer. But the second misstep came when BP’s engineering team ignored Halliburton.

Again, that shouldn’t have caused a panic: The British oil giant had another contractor on board the rig to definitively test the well’s integrity once the cement was in place. But then a third money-saving and time-saving corner was cut: BP decided to send that contractor home 11 hours before the accident, without running the test.

Rig officials might have been able to do without that test if they had correctly interpreted the readings from a subsequent pressure test. But expert testimony and documents suggest key error No. 4 occurred when rig officials erroneously viewed that test as a success.

Maybe none of that would have led to a blowout, if BP hadn’t made questionable decision No. 5: replacing heavy drilling mud with light seawater in the mile-long riser connecting rig to well, and in the top third of the hole itself, before setting a final plug.

And lastly, removing that mud barrier, the principal defense against gas kicking to the surface, might not have been fatal if the rig’s blowout preventer, the massive metal stack that shuts off the well in an emergency, had functioned properly. It did not.

As money pressures mount, caution cast aside

The Macondo well, in the Mississippi Canyon 50 miles southeast of Venice, vexed both the men who designed it and the ones who drilled it. The Transocean rig Marianas drilled a shallow portion of the well, but had to go back to a shipyard for hurricane repairs last November. In February, Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon moved in to take its place.

The troubles continued. Daily drilling reports show that on March 10, hydrocarbons flowed into the well in a sand layer several thousand feet above the oil reservoir, and a piece of drill pipe got stuck. The pipe was never retrieved.

Rig workers and engineers say they lost thousands of barrels of drilling mud during the process and don’t know why. The heavy mud is a principal barrier against gas kicks, and also helps keep drills lubricated and carries earthen shavings out of the way.

The constant problems caused huge delays and extra expense, creating additional pressure on the workers and managers to finish the project quickly and cheaply. Documents show that the Deepwater Horizon had been scheduled to drill a different well 43 days before the accident. The Macondo well, budgeted by BP to cost $96 million, had cost at least $40 million more than that when it blew, records show.

BP’s Gulf drilling manager, David Sims, acknowledged in testimony that “every conversation, every decision has a cost factor.” E-mail messages and reports by BP engineers in the weeks before the accident make reference to money or time savings as they debated methods for closing the well. In each case, they went the cheaper way.

No. 1: Fewer barriers to gas flow

Five days before the accident, BP asked for government permission to change its well design three times in a span of 24 hours. Each request was immediately approved by the U.S. Interior Department, some within minutes.

Independent engineers who have reviewed the design changes say they were baffling. They were questioned at BP, too. An internal company document from mid-April acknowledged a single, long tube running through the center of the 13,000-foot well would leave a side space for hydrocarbons to shoot up, with only one seal to stop a blowout. Computer models raised questions about whether the design would result in a weak seal on the well’s walls.

Typical industry practice for exploration wells, according to numerous engineers, would be to run a short tube to line the bottom 1,500 feet of the hole. That liner would hook onto a bigger tube above it, which would tie back to the top of the well, creating an additional barrier blocking natural gas from flowing into the side space between the tubes. It also involved setting an extra plug in the center of the well.

The gas that eventually blew out of the Macondo well either went up the center of the hole or up through a side space. Either way, the industry-endorsed method would have given the drillers one more barrier to slow or halt the gas’s attack. A BP document shows that was also once the company’s preferred method, though it would have cost as much as $10 million more.

In the operation’s final weeks, those cost concerns took over. On March 30, BP engineer Brian Morel, whose name is on the well design documents, wrote that “not running the tie-back saves a good deal of time/money.”

Then BP got a measure of safety affirmation. Halliburton ran a computer model April 15 that showed a good cement seal on the walls would be possible with the long central tube, as long as BP used 21 devices called centralizers to help the cement set. An internal BP document called it the “best economic case and well integrity case.”

It appears BP was determined to use a long tube in the middle because it would make future oil production operations easier. Often, oil companies drill exploratory wells, strike oil, fill the well with cement and then drill a new well to extract the oil. In this case, BP wanted to be able to plug the exploratory well without filling it in, abandoning it only temporarily so a production crew could tap into the hole Deepwater Horizon had already drilled.

It’s not uncommon to convert an exploration well to a production well, but it wasn’t something workers on this rig were used to. That left many crew members in uncharted territory.

No. 2: Fewer centralizers to keep cement even

Although BP engineers got confirmation from Halliburton that a long center tube could be safe, they weren’t initially keen on spending the extra time and money to install more than six centralizers. The devices help keep the tubes centered in the hole as they telescope downward. If one tube isn’t on center, cement poured there will go to the wider side, leaving a weaker barrier on the other side.

Jesse Gagliano, a Halliburton employee who worked in the same office with the BP engineers, warned his clients April 15 of the possibility. BP’s Morel responded: “Hopefully the pipe stays centralized due to gravity.”

A worried Gagliano caught up to several members of BP’s engineering team at their shared Houston offices. He persuaded Gregg Walz, the engineering team’s new leader, that 21 centralizers were needed based on Halliburton computer models. Walz told John Guide, his counterpart in operations, “We need to honor the modeling.”

Sims, the new manager for several of BP’s Gulf wells, agreed with Walz. The company had 15 additional centralizers sent to the rig the next morning. But then Guide found out the centralizers didn’t have the right collars to keep them in place. Also, he complained in an e-mail message that it would “take 10 hrs to install them.” In the end, the 15 centralizers were not used.

On April 18, Halliburton ran a new model of a cement job using fewer than seven centralizers. It showed a “severe risk of gas flow.” But Gagliano didn’t make a scene this time. He attached the report to an e-mail message to his clients. Three different BP engineers later testified they never saw the warning, which was buried on page 18 of the report. Guide said he didn’t read the report until after the accident.

Even Gagliano never dreamed that two days later, the rig would go up in smoke and flames.

He said he didn’t try to stop the job because uneven cement “doesn’t equal a blowout. My concern was … having to do a remedial cement job.”

But that assumed BP would find out if there was a problem to remedy. After Guide went with the riskier cementing method, engineers Morel and Brett Cocales, who had seen Halliburton’s models, shrugged it off.

“Who cares, it’s done, end of story, will probably be fine,” Cocales wrote Morel. Morel responded that they could see if Halliburton’s models were right once they checked data on the actual cement barriers.
That check was never done.

No. 3: No bond log to check cement integrity

BP sent a crew from oil-field services firm Schlumberger to the rig two days before the accident to run various tests on the well. The company was paid about $10,000 to wait until the cement was set. It would get another $100,000 or so if the crew ran a cement bond log, the gold standard for testing cement integrity.

Initially, when engineers decided to use the long central tube, they acknowledged a cement bond log would probably be needed.

But because cement didn’t escape when it was poured, BP sent Schlumberger home on April 20 at 11:15 a.m., without having run the test.

Had it been run, the bond log might have found problems with the cement barriers, requiring a new cementing procedure that would have take at least a month, said Tom McFarland, a cementing consultant. Additional cost to BP: at least another $30 million.

Again, by itself the decision was explainable. Cement bond logs aren’t always necessary. But the skipped steps on a troublesome project were adding up.

No. 4: Pressure test misinterpreted

When BP executives toured the rig the afternoon of April 20, they found the drill team gathered in a shack, debating the results of the negative pressure test, which measures upward pressure from the shut-in well. A good test would mean the well was nearly complete.
But 15 barrels of mud had leaked through a valve in the blowout preventer. That was odd. A few weeks earlier, a mechanic, Mike Williams, had reported that chunks of rubber from the valve came up in mud from the hole. He saw computer readings showing the drill pipe was moved while the valve was closed around it, and he believed that had damaged the rubber closure. But a supervisor dismissed it as normal wear and tear.

Three hours before the accident, the drill team tried the pressure test again, this time instructing the worker in charge of the blowout preventer, Chris Pleasant, to mash the rubber valve against the pipe with more force. Little or no fluid escaped.

Better. But still, the drill team observed high pressure readings. That was abnormal. BP executive Sims said the team members sounded “confused” after the second negative test, and he suggested that Transocean’s top rig officer, Jimmy Harrell, help resolve the issue.

Later, at dinner, one of the visitors, BP Vice President Patrick O’Bryan asked Harrell if everything was OK. He gave the thumbs-up. Guide talked to BP’s well site leader, Robert Kaluza, and recalled that Kaluza, too, was “confused” by the pressure.

Rig officials eventually ruled the test a success. But John Smith, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at LSU who was hired by federal investigators as an expert, testified that the rig officials misinterpreted the results.

Smith also said the test itself may have been faulty. BP had paid for two doses of a viscous fluid for the test, and ordered contractors to use both at once. Smith said the abnormal quantity may have distorted the pressure readings.

The mixing may have been yet another cost-cutting move. If the extra dose had gone unused, BP would have had to pay to transport it to shore and dump it as hazardous waste. Once poured in the hole, however, federal rules allowed it to simply be dumped overboard for free.

No. 5: Mud barrier removed early

According to investigators’ notes, Kaluza was confused by his bosses’ directions in the hours before the accident. “They decided we should do displacement (of protective drilling mud with seawater) and the negative test together; I don’t know why,” Kaluza told investigators. “Maybe they were trying to save time. At the end of the well sometimes they think about speeding up.”

Smith, the LSU engineer, said rig workers thought they were all set after the negative test, which may explain why they missed signs of gas kicks starting 50 minutes before the first explosion.

The crew was confident enough to take one more risky step before setting a final cement plug: replacing heavy drilling mud with seawater, which is 40 percent lighter and far less capable of holding down gas.

No. 6: Blowout preventer failed

In spite of all the shortcuts BP took, much of the disaster, particularly the leaking oil, could have been avoided if the blowout preventer had activated when power was lost.

When Harrell, the top Transocean man on the rig, was concerned about the plans for April 20, he grumbled that the BOP’s shear rams might have to save the day: “Well, I guess that’s what we have those pinchers for.”

When two explosions rang out, at about 9:56 p.m., it was time for the pinchers. Pleasant hit a button on a control panel. Lights indicated he had sent a message a mile below the rig and sea, through optics and hydraulic lines, to disconnect the rig from the well. That would cause the blowout preventer to activate its shear rams, cut the drill pipe and seal the well.

None of that happened. The well wasn’t shut and the rig wasn’t able to escape the fuel source for a fire that would rage for two days.

Investigators wonder if two pipes, found side by side just above the blowout preventer, fouled up the works. There is only supposed to be one pipe, and the blowout preventer’s slicing rams are designed to cut only one.

But none of that explains why other parts of the blowout preventer never seemed to function, or why the emergency disconnect never activated. Pleasant testified that when he tried to intervene manually, he “had no hydraulics.” The loss of three things — power, hydraulics and communications — is supposed to trip a “dead-man” switch and close in the well. It didn’t.

Rig officials knew all along the blowout preventer had some leaks, notably in the yellow control pod that receives messages from the rig. But they didn’t think it mattered. BP and Transocean officials said they were familiar with a federal regulation stating that if “a BOP control station or pod … does not function properly” the rig must “suspend further drilling operations” until it’s fixed, but they didn’t think the regulation applied in this case.

BP’s man in charge on the rig until April 16, Ronnie Sepulvado, said he reported the pod’s problems to Guide and assumed Guide would tell the feds.

He didn’t. And another federal regulation requiring the blowout preventer to be recertified every five years was ignored. Deepwater Horizon’s BOP had been in use for nearly 10 years and was never recertified. Getting it recertified would have required Transocean to take the rig out of use for months while the four-story stack was disassembled.

It was one more corporate cost avoided. And a final precaution that could have erased a string of other missteps and spared an infinitely larger cost later.

David Hammer can be reached at dhammer@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3322.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

September 6, 2010

Is BP Blackmailing the Feds?

By Kate Sheppard
| Fri Sep. 3, 2010 7:35 AM PDT.

When the details on the deal between the federal government and BP to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate spill victims were released last month, I reported on concerns that the design of the fund might compromise its long-term viability and create a conflict of interest in cracking down on BP’s misdeeds. The fund was designed in such a way that it basically hinges on keeping BP’s Gulf-drilling subsidiary in production and turning a profit.

In an interview with New York Times published today, BP executives confirmed as muchif the government cracks down on the company by cutting it off from obtaining new leases or permits, the fund could go belly-up:

But as state and federal officials, individuals and businesses continue to seek additional funds beyond the minimum fines and compensation that BP must pay under the law, the company has signaled its reluctance to cooperate unless it can continue to operate in the Gulf of Mexico. The gulf accounts for 11 percent of its global production.

“If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow,” said David Nagle, BP’s executive vice president for BP America, in an interview. That, he added, “makes it harder for us to fund things, fund these programs.”
This, of course, is the problem with making the fund contingent upon keeping BP Exploration & Production Inc., a subsidiary of BP America Production that deals primarily with Gulf of Mexico production, profitable. The House-passed spill bill includes a provision that would bar companies with bad safety and environmental records from obtaining new leases in US waters; while the provision doesn’t specifically name BP, it’s clear that’s who the measure is gunning for. But now BP is using the spill fund to pressure the federal government into backing off actual penalties for their transgressions in the Gulf.

BP is also pointing to other actions they’ve taken, like providing $89.5 million to states for the promotion of tourism, as reasons why the government shouldn’t crack down on them:

Andrew Gowers, a BP spokesman, said that BP had shown good will by going beyond its legal obligations to clean up the spill and compensate those affected.

“We have committed to do a number of things that are not part of the formal agreement with the White House,” he said. “We are not making a direct statement about anything we are committed to do. We are just expressing frustration that our commitments of good will have at least in some quarters been met with this kind of response.”
I can imagine the threats will only get worse when (or perhaps, if) the federal government starts announcing the fines for legal violations and costs for damage to natural resources that BP will be expected to pay. The company could owe up to $17.6 billion for Clean Water Act violations alone. But if the price of making sure BP pays up is keeping the company drilling in the Gulf, the government has certainly cut a bad deal here.

Kate Sheppard covers energy and environmental politics in Mother Jones’ Washington bureau.

Special thanks to Richard Charter

September 4, 2010

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-dispersants-20100905,0,6506539.story

By Amina Khan, Los Angeles Times
September 5, 2010

In the wake of the BP oil spill, gaping questions remain about a key tool used during cleanup: the nearly 2 million gallons of chemical dispersants sprayed over the water or onto the gushing wellhead on the seafloor. Do the chemicals help recovery, hinder it or neither?

Just as dishwashing detergent breaks grease on dirty plates into bits, dispersants help turn a slick of oil into droplets a hair’s breadth in size. In droplet form, oil is more easily pulled under by currents, away from birds, otters, seaweed and other marine life near the surface. And because droplets present a greater surface area of oil to water, dispersants should, in theory, permit microbes to chew up oil far faster.

Yet despite more than half a century of dispersant use in oil spill cleanups, the long-term effects that dispersants or dispersant-treated oil have on marine life remain as opaque as a layer of crude.

Scientists say they still don’t know whether dispersants truly enable bacteria to digest spilled oil more quickly or whether dispersed oil is safer for marine life than untreated slicks.

They can’t say whether it was a help or hindrance that BP decided to spray much of the dispersant not onto the water surface, as is more common, but over oil pouring out of the leaking wellhead 5,000 feet under the sea. Both the high pressure (151 times greater than at the surface) and the oil’s temperature (100 degrees Celsius, or 212 degrees Fahrenheit) could have affected dispersant action, either for better or worse.

The size of this spill also made it a standout. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil were released, about 19 times the amount in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster off Alaska and significantly more than the 1979 Ixtoc spill off the Mexican coast, in which about 3.5 million barrels of crude spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

“On a scale of the Deepwater Horizon blowout, we don’t know for a whole variety of reasons how well dispersants have worked,” said Neal Langerman, founder of consulting firm Advanced Chemical Safety.

Bacteria do seem to be digesting the oil in the Gulf of Mexico, according to an Aug. 25 report, but data are mixed on whether dispersants help bacteria along. Mervin Fingas, a retired scientist with the Canadian government, said that of roughly 40 biodegradability studies he surveyed between 1997 and 2008, about 60% said dispersant retarded growth of oil-eating microbes and 15% reported no effect. The remaining 25% noted a positive effect.

But positive findings are open to interpretation. At a 1999 oil spill conference, researchers reported that microbial populations dining on oil treated with the dispersant Corexit 9500 (used by BP in the gulf) grew more than seven times as large as those eating oil dispersed physically, suggesting the bacteria were helping.

Yet a comprehensive 2005 review of dispersants by the National Research Council concluded that the healthy bacterial growth in such studies could easily be due to microbes feeding on dispersant, not oil. “There is no conclusive evidence demonstrating either the enhancement or the inhibition of microbial biodegradation when dispersants are used,” the 12 authors wrote.

Some confusion comes from the diversity of dispersant formulas, Fingas said. Some contain chemicals that bacteria prefer to digest. Others block the ability of some microbes to attach to oil droplets and start feeding on the hydrocarbons.

The primary purpose of dispersants is to move oil away from surface-dwelling marine life. In the case of the BP well blowout, because the application was deep under the sea, much of the oil never rose to the surface which means it went somewhere else, said Robert Diaz, a marine scientist at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va.

“The dispersants definitely don’t make oil disappear. They take it from one area in an ecosystem and put it in another,” Diaz said.

The types of dispersants used today are far less noxious than the industrial-strength degreasers used in the past, said Beth McGee, a senior water quality scientist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, a nonprofit conservation group in Annapolis, Md., and a coauthor of the 2005 review. Most studies find them nowhere near as harmful as oil, she said.

But the concern is that dispersed oil may do more harm to marine life than oil left alone. And on this point, findings vary widely, in part because lab tests have limitations, said Andrew Nyman, a Louisiana State University professor. In small containers, dispersed oil can’t dilute. Studies look at large, quick effects, such as death or deformity. Results depend on the oil type, whether it’s fresh, the dispersant, the animal being studied and its life stage.

Studies show that zooplankton, oysters and crustaceans may eat dispersed oil droplets, which can match the size of their food. Dispersed oil can cause premature hatching in Pacific herring, block barnacles’ ability to react to light and worsen oil’s harmful effects under sunlight. Larval stages are particularly sensitive, as are gills of fish, squid, crabs and oysters, said environmental biochemist Arne Jernelov of the Swedish Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm, who led a United Nations team examining the 1979 Ixtoc spill.

Yet many studies find dispersed oil is no worse, or worse only under certain conditions. A 2001 study by researchers at ExxonMobil Biomedical Sciences found that oil dispersed with Corexit 9527, also used on the BP spill, was twice as toxic to the inland silverside, an estuarine fish but not if that crude had been exposed to the elements. Such weathered oil, when dispersed, was 10 times less harmful than undispersed oil.

And on Aug. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that its lab tests had uncovered relatively little difference in toxicity to the inland silverside and crustaceans called mysid shrimp of several different oil-dispersant mixtures compared with oil alone. EPA scientist Paul Anastas said dispersant use “seems to be a wise decision” and that “the oil itself Š is enemy No. 1.”

This jumble of findings has led to disagreement among experts that might be resolved by careful analysis of real-life cleanups, which hardly ever happens, said Larry McKinney, executive director of Texas A&M University’s Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies in Corpus Christi, Texas.

Funding for such studies “waxes and wanes with oil spills, but never seems to follow through,” McKinney said. Many investigations were launched after the Ixtoc spill to explore the effects of dispersed oil, he added.

But funding, and science, dried up when the well did.

amina.khan@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times
September 4, 2010

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-dispersants-20100905,0,6506539.story

Special thanks to Richard Charter