Haliburton Sent Bad Cement to Deepwater Horizon.

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Big Orange
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Haliburton Sent Bad Cement to Deepwater Horizon.

Post by Big Orange »

Heh, while Haliburton is something out of a comic book, even some of its employees knew something was going wrong, and BP in recent years must be suffering from a severe communications breakdown between its inhouse divisions and seperate subcontractors, BP's control on major projects slipped and the Gulf blew up in its face:
BP, Halliburton knew Gulf of Mexico well cement was 'unstable', finds report

The US company conducted four tests between February and April on the cement slurry that were relevant to the Macondo well, with three concluding that the mix was unstable. Halliburton shared the results of one of the tests with BP, which designed the well, in an email on March 8, according to Fred H Bartlit, the chief investigator for the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, a presidential panel examining the spill.

In a letter to the commissioners, Mr Bartlit said that in passing the test result to BP "there is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personel raised any questions about it".

The letter is the first finding of one of several official investigations into the April 20 explosion that killed 11 men and caused the worst oil spill in US history. Shares in Halliburton, which has previously said tests it conducted on the cement showed it was stable, plunged in New York, while the cost of insuring its debt jumped. Mr Bartlit's letter was released after the stock market closed in London. BP's US shares were flat.

Though oil has not flowed from the well since the middle of July, BP, Halliburton and Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, face multiple investigations in the US into the explosion. If any of these inquiries uncover evidence of gross negligence, the financial penalties could run into billions of dollars.

Without identifying the cement work as the central cause of the spill, Mr Barlit says that "we have known for some time that the cement used to secure the production casing and isolate the hydrocarbon zone at the bottom of the Macondo well must have failed in some way".

BP's own internal inquiry into the accident found that after a "bad cement job" by Halliburton, the valve at the bottom of the well failed to prevent oil bursting out of the reservoir. BP's pointed the finger towards Halliburton, but it did not assess how BP staff had monitored the cement job.

After BP's inquiry, Halliburton strongly denied any culpability. It told an investigative panel from the National Academy of Engineering that BP staff missed "red flags" and said the report came up with "erroneous conclusions".

Thomas Roth, Halliburton's vice president in charge of cementing, blamed BP's structural design rather than his company's work, was to blame for disaster. He said the entire well was "flawed", accusing BP of failing to take enough safety precautions.

The letter from Mr Bartlit explains that the commission instructed Chevron to run tests on a batch of cement slurry provided by Halliburton and similar to that used in the Macondo well. When Chrevron's tests found the mix to be unstable, investigators asked that Halliburton hand over all the data on the tests it had run on the cement.

"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."

Halliburton said it would be releasing a response later, while BP could not be reached for comment.
Telegraph
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