Saturday, July 24, 2010
Alarms and safety mechanisms on gulf disaster oil rig were disabled, chief technician at Transocean reveals
Vital warning systems on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig were switched off at the time of the explosion in order to spare workers being woken by false alarms, a federal investigation has heard.
The revelation that alarm systems on the rig at the centre of the disaster were disabled – and that key safety mechanisms had also consciously been switched off – came in testimony by a chief technician working for Transocean, the drilling company that owned the rig.
Mike Williams, who was in charge of maintaining the rig's electronic systems, was giving evidence to the federal panel in New Orleans that is investigating the cause of the disaster on 20 April, which killed 11 people.
Williams told the hearing today that no alarms went off on the day of the explosion because they had been "inhibited". Sensors monitoring conditions on the rig and in the Macondo oil well beneath it were still working, but the computer had been instructed not to trigger any alarms in case of adverse readings...
[Full Article]Labels: BP, Deepwater Horizon, Gulf oil spill, Transocean
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Fireboats battled the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon on April 21, a day after it exploded.
In the survey, commissioned by the rig’s owner, Transocean, workers said that company plans were not carried out properly and that they “often saw unsafe behaviors on the rig.”
Some workers also voiced concerns about poor equipment reliability, “which they believed was as a result of drilling priorities taking precedence over planned maintenance,” according to the survey, one of two Transocean reports obtained by The New York Times...
[Full Article]Labels: Deepwater Horizon, Gulf oil spill, Transocean
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Former BP Chairman and current BP CEO both dumped stocks in weeks before disaster
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Thursday, June 17, 2010
BP was aware of cracks appearing in the Macondo well as far back as February, right around the time Goldman Sachs and BP Chairman Tony Hayward were busy dumping their stocks in the company on the eve of the explosion that led to the oil spill, according to information uncovered by congressional investigators.
The Mining and Mineral Services agency released documents to Bloomberg indicating that BP “was trying to seal cracks in the well about 40 miles (64 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast,” according to the report.
The fissures, which BP began to attempt to fix on February 13, could have played a role in the disaster, though this is a question still being explored by investigators. Improperly sealed, the cracks cause explosive natural gas to rush up the shaft.
“The company attempted a “cement squeeze,” which involves pumping cement to seal the fissures, according to a well activity report. Over the following week the company made repeated attempts to plug cracks that were draining expensive drilling fluid, known as “mud,” into the surrounding rocks,” states the report.
As we previously highlighted, eyewitness evidence indicates that Deepwater Horizon managers knew that the BP oil rig had major problems before its explosion on April 20. A crew member who rescued burning workers on the rig told Houston attorney Tony Buzbee of a conversation between Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell and someone in Houston. According to the witness, Harrell was screaming, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.”
The fact that BP managers were aware of problems with the rig and were seemingly unconcerned about fixing them only lends more weight to the already startling indications of some having foreknowledge of the disaster.
As we highlighted last week, on page 37 of British Petroleum’s own investigative report into the oil spill, it is stated that the Hydraulic Control System on equipment designed to automatically seal the well in an emergency was modified without BP’s knowledge sometime before the explosion.
Highly suspicious stock and share trades by people connected to BP before the explosion indicate some extent of foreknowledge.
Goldman Sachs dumped 44% of its shares in BP Oil during the first quarter of 2010 – shares that subsequently lost 36 percent of their value, equating to $96 million. The current chairman of Goldman Sachs is Bilderberg luminary Peter Sutherland, who is also the former chairman of British Petroleum.
Furthermore, as reported by the London Telegraph on June 5th, Tony Hayward, the current BP CEO sold £1.4 million of his shares in the fuel giant weeks before the spill.
On April 12th, just over one week before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Halliburton, the world’s second largest oilfield services corporation, surprised some by acquiring Boots & Coots, a relatively small but vastly experienced oil well control company.
Halliburton is named in the majority of some two dozen lawsuits filed since the explosion by Gulf Coast people and businesses who claim that the company is to blame for the disaster.
Halliburton was forced to admit in testimony at a congressional hearing last month that it carried out a cementing operation 20 hours before the Gulf of Mexico rig went up in flames. The lawsuits claim that four Halliburton workers stationed on the rig improperly capped the well.
Labels: BP, Deepwater Horizon, Goldman Sachs, oil rig
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.
Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.
There is no suggestion that he acted improperly or had prior knowledge that the company was to face the biggest setback in its history.
His decision, however, means he avoided losing more than £423,000 when BP’s share price plunged after the oil spill began six weeks ago.
Since he disposed of 223,288 shares on March 17, the company’s share price has fallen by 30 per cent. About £40 billion has been wiped off its total value. The fall has caused pain not just for BP shareholders, but also for millions of company pension funds and small investors who have money held in tracker funds...
Labels: BP, British Petroleum, Deepwater Horizon, shares, stock
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Missing Oil Rig Safety Data: Lost In Explosion
WASHINGTON — A U.S. House subcommittee has found that the well on the oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico failed two critical tests within hours before the catastrophe.
After reviewing 100,000 documents, members of the oversight and investigations subcommittee zeroed in Wednesday on a process in which cement is poured into the well to keep oil and gas from surging to the surface.
A burst of methane gas that reached the rig from below the sea is being blamed for the disaster on the Deepwater Horizon rig that killed 11 workers and has resulted in a massive oil spill that threatens the Gulf Coast.
The failing of the tests should have been a warning to engineers conducting them, said one witness testifying at a Wednesday hearing before the subcommittee...
Missing Data Pose Mystery In Gulf Spill Probe
A "black box" can reveal why an airplane crashed or how fast a car was going in the instant before an accident. Yet there are no records of a critical safety test supposedly performed during the fateful hours before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.
They went down with the rig.
While some data were being transmitted to shore for safekeeping right up until the April 20 blast, officials from Transocean, the rig owner, told Congress that the last seven hours of its data are missing and that all written logs were lost in the explosion...
Labels: Deepwater Horizon, explosion, oil rig
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