BP Official Made Fatal Decision Before Oil Rig Explosion

Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Florida Maritime News,Gulf Coast,Louisiana Maritime News,Maritime Law,Transocean on May 26, 2010

WASHINGTON DC – In the time since the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico there has been a government inquiry in Louisiana and a committee meeting by the U.S. House of Representatives where new information has come to light about the fateful hours just before the disaster on the oil drilling rig.

Satellite view of oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico

It has now come to light that company executives argued with top drilling hands for hours about how to proceed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform before a BP official made a decision to remove heavy drilling fluid from the well and replace it with lighter weight seawater. As it turned out, this decision made it unable to prevent gas from surging to the surface and exploding. 

The decision by the BP official was made over the objection of the rig’s chief mechanic Doug Brown, who warned that they would be relying on the rig’s blowout preventer if they proceeded the way BP wanted. In sworn testimony on Wednesday, May 26, 2010, Brown said that the BP official stood up during the meeting on that occasion and said, “This is how it’s going to be.”

As it turned out, the blowout preventer failed and a disaster ensued.

On Tuesday May 25, 2010, a House of Representatives committee released a memo that outlined some of the decisions that were made on that fateful evening. Over a period of about five hours prior to the explosion, the crew of the Deepwater Horizon had a number of warning signs that conditions deep underwater were worsening.

The memo from the House of Representatives committee provided new information about failures on the ill-fated oil platform. Although the memo was based on a briefing by BP’s own investigators, still the oil company’s own inquiry continues to avoid a couple of important questions:

1. Why were so many warnings ignored? and …
2. Why did BP decide to go ahead and remove the drilling mud?

These are key questions that might arise from the hearings that are being conducted by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Minerals Management Service in Louisiana.

In a briefing to congressional committees, BP stated that crews were aware of unusual pressure and fluid readings prior to the disaster. These readings should have alerted them not to remove the heavy drilling lubricants from the well. That was the move that apparently allowed a sudden upwelling of gas that led to the April 20th explosion on the oil platform followed by its subsequent sinking off the Louisiana coast.

Carl Smith, a former U.S. Coast Guard captain and expert witness said, “That’s something you learn at well-control school.” Smith pointed out that when you’re circulating fluid, that you need to monitor how much is going in and how much is coming out. Smith said that if more fluid is coming out than is going in, then that would be an indicator that “something’s going on.”

The Miami Herald contributed to this story.