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)