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Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Louisiana Maritime News,Maritime Law,Maritime Lawsuits,Texas Maritime News,Transocean on July 22, 2010
KENNER, LA – John Guide, BP wells team leader, answered questions at the Deepwater Horizon joint investigation hearings held Thursday, July 22, at the Radisson Hotel by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement investigating the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion on April 20.
John Guide, BP wells team leader, answers question during the Deepwater Horizon joint investigation hearings at the Radisson Hotel in Kenner. PHOTO: Brett Duke / The Times-Picayune
A top BP official on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the time of the massive explosions April 20 questioned why company executives in Houston combined two processes on their troubled well, suggesting the bosses were trying to “save time.”
“They decided we should do displacement (of protective drilling mud with seawater) and the negative test together; I don’t know why,” BP company man Robert Kaluza told internal BP investigators after the accident, according to notes from those investigators.
“Maybe they were trying to save time. At the end of the well sometimes they think about speeding up.”
That’s how the investigators’ notes were read Thursday by Houston maritime lawyer, Steve Gordon during Marine Board investigative hearings in Kenner.
Experts have said it was a mistake to displace the mud before the well was completely plugged, because the mud weight is the first defense against natural gas or oil kicking up and blowing out the well.
Kaluza, who had only been overseeing rig operations for four days when the accident happened, has not made any other public statement about it because he has twice invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to refuse to testify before the Marine Board panel.
At the panel hearings Thursday, Gordon asked Kaluza’s boss, BP wells team leader John Guide, whether Kaluza was right.
“I don’t know exactly what Mr. Kaluza is referring to,” Guide said.
Gordon asked if it’s true that doing those two activities together would save time.
“Could be,” Guide said.
“And time equals money out there, right?” Gordon asked.
“Yes,” Guide said.
Source: Nola.com