Halliburton Admits Skipping Critical Test on Cement Used to Seal BP Oil Well

Posted in BP British Petroleum,Deepwater Horizon,Government,Gulf Coast,Halliburton,Maritime Law,World Maritime News on November 1, 2010

Halliburton Co. finally admitted on Thursday, October 30,  that it did skip doing a critical test on the final formulation of cement used to seal the BP Macondo oil well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20th.

The company, which was BP’s cementing contractor, said that BP at the last-minute increased the amount of a critical ingredient in the cement mix. While an earlier test showed the cement was stable, the company never performed a stability test on the new blend.

WATCH VIDEO

The cement’s failure to prevent oil and gas from entering the well has been identified as one of the causes of the Deepwater Horizon disaster that occurred on April 20, 2010.

The commission staff said that “Halliburton and BP both had results in March showing that a very similar foam slurry design to the one actually pumped at the Macondo well would be unstable, but neither acted upon that data.”

Commission staff also cited Transocean, the owner of the drilling rig, as sharing some blame. Read Oil Spill Commission Report

Source: MSNBC