Oil Spill: Commission Finds That Companies Knew of Cement Flaws in the Macondo Well
by ilene - October 28th, 2010 8:16 pm
Oil Spill: Commission Finds That Companies Knew of Cement Flaws in the Macondo Well [UPDATE]
By BRYAN WALSH, courtesy of TIME
[Update: Looking again over the letter from the commission's investigator, Fred Bartlit, it's not obvious how clear Halliburton's one warning to BP on the cement test were. From the letter:
Halliburton provided data from one of the two February tests to BP in an email dated March 8, 2010. The data appeared in a technical report along with other information. There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it. There is no indication that Halliburton provided the data from the other February test to BP.
If Halliburton really failed to highlight the problems with the cement test to BP, and simply buried the data in a vast technical report, that would seem to shift more of the blame to Halliburton—although at the end of the day, it is still BP's well. And as Bartlit notes at the end of his letter, since there's always a risk that cement jobs can be faulty, there are tests that can be done to doublecheck the quality—and BP and Transocean, the company actually operating the Deepwater Horizon, did not seem to perform these tests. More info will be forthcoming as the companies respond, but right now it's not looking good for Halliburton—the company's share prices are already down by 8%.]
Original post: In the first official finding of responsibility for the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe—the worst oil spill in U.S. history—the presidential commission investigating the accident found that both Halliburton and BP knew before the explosion on April 20 that the cement mixture that was meant to seal the Macondo well was unstable. Despite that fact, they still went ahead with the work, setting the stage for the accident. The staff found that Halliburton—in charge of cementing the Macondo well—had conducted four laboratory tests that indicated the cement mixture standards wasn’t up to industry standards. The results of at least one of those tests was given to BP on March 8, yet BP failed to act on it. Another Halliburton cement test was carried out about a week before the Deepwater Horizon blowout—and the test also found the cement was unstable—yet the results were never sent to BP.
All of this new information comes…