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Who is to blame for the Gulf oil spill? A contracting company on the oil rig made a public statement, saying they were not allowed to test the well for a faulty seal. It goes without saying that testing the seal on the well would have prevented the explosion.
Basically, unforeseeable my perky metal ass.
1. There’s the public statement by the contracting company
Source is http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/05/costly_time-consuming_test_of.html
A spokesman for the testing firm, Schlumberger, said BP had a Schlumberger team and equipment for sending acoustic testing lines down the well "on standby" from April 18 to April 20. But BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen T. Harris said.
2. Rumors flesh out the story that BP worked to subvert the normal testing process.
Source is http://adropofrain.net/2010/05/rumor-schlumberger-exits-deep-horizon-hours-before-blowout/
SLB (Schlumberger)gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still
kicking heavily, which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the
“company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore6 hours later, the platform explodes.
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Read the same story on Huffpost
Thanks for reading FDL people!
14 Comments
Thank you, I would not have seen this. Kinda curious why this test isn’t mandatory. Was the “company man” one of the people who died when the thing blew up, I wonder?
http://videosift.com/video/Worst-Nightmare-Realized-for-Plaquemines-President rel=”nofollow”>http://videosift.com/video/Worst-Nightmare-Realized-for-Plaquemines-President
video showing marshes full of oil
uh, did you watch the 60 minutes special? There’s a link on the huffpost story.
If you watched the 60 minutes story, you would know that all the lifeboats on the oil rig were launched while the crew was trying to control this situation, effectively leaving the crew to die. I’m laughing while writing this, am I bad person?
I don’t have a TV, and I don’t think you’re a bad person. This thing makes me feel so bad it’s hard to think about it. I watch the animation/projections every day, but the news is hard to take sometimes.
Thank you for the link to the video, I knew it was coming. I wish the people in a position to make some decisions could manage to do so! This is a big country, I’d hope we could do better than these miserable excuses.
Schlumberger was the dog that didn’t bark.
The company seems to be an expert on deepwater cementing.
Actually, the way things seemed to unfold, this looks to be a way Halliburton shifts blame on BP by making this claim in testimony:
Did the contractor ever suggest to BP they run these logs to test the seal?
Thanks, marinara, for this post, and thanks to alank & transparait. I too would not have known about this except for your post and comments.
I was once at a new well on the D & J sand east of Denver when drilling was completed, mud everywhere, and the instrument-laden Schlumberger truck arrived to run an electronic probe down the well and see whether it was likely to be a good producer. Even stood in the back of the big truck; watched the graph of the probe being printed out; and got a much-prized copy of the graph. Highly professional, was my impression of the Schlumberger outfit.
It sounds as if its personnel on the Deepwater Horizon, and back at company HQ, also knew enough to know that things weren’t right on the rig, and as if it cared enough about its people to send a helicopter to get them out of an unusually dangerous situation.
May BP and Halliburton be held fully accountable, civilly and criminally, for what they’ve done. Not that there’s any way to undo all the damage.
So, you would make a good character witness for Schlumberger, I expect. The image on the NOLA page is rather conveniently incriminating against BP and conveniently vindicates Halliburton.
Again, as intimated above, these experts who claimed to spot obvious flaws in what they call BP’s decisions/plans didn’t seem very compelled to make the case before them in a very timely fashion. The Schlumberger crew, e.g., stood by quietly for 5 days before departing, by their account.
http://media.nola.com/2010_gulf_oil_spill/photo/oil-halliburton-cement-052010jpg-e618a2271a66c847.jpg
alank, let’s see your case against haliburton. I accept that the concrete plugs failed, but I’d like to see more stuff if you have it.
This is a very, very interesting post. I wondered when (if) Schlumberger’s name would turn up in any of this; my familiarity is limited to someone I knew who was heavily invested in this company. Emphasis on the “professional”, as the helo story suggests.
It would be extremely interesting to be a fly on the wall of Schlumberger offices.
Here’s hoping that we hear a great deal more about this ‘[Schlumberger] story behind the [BP explosion] story’.
Thanks marinara. I’ve been following the posts on oilfieldhand. Rockman is one of the posters there and I believe he brought us this tidbit.
Schlumberger has now acknowledged their presence on the rig and that they departed 11 hours prior to the explosion. I also have brushed shoulders with folks from Schlumberger (Scientific and Engineering). Nothing but utmost respect for their experience, motives, knowledge and training.
Word on the street is that we won’t hear confirmation of the scenarios until someone places the Schlumberger employees under oath (all sorts of Non-disclosure agreements in place etc).
Fascinating diary. Highly recommended, including the source links.
FWIW
Schlumberger developed the various techniques that make up well logging back in the 40′s or 50′s. They own the industry. They probably do 80% of all the well logging in the world. They are pricey, but their reputation is solid.
I wonder what the drilling program as originally planned was. It is more the norm to run a CBL after setting the casing than not. If that isn’t in the drilling plan, it may be in the AFE (Authorization for Expenditure) which is th budget and approval document.
The AFE is probably private, the drilling permit should be FOIA material.