[THS] BP Lacked Well Control Six Weeks Before Blowout, E-Mails Show

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-05-30/bp-lacked-well-control-six-weeks-before-blowout-e-mails-show.html


BP Lacked Well Control Six Weeks Before Blowout, E-Mails Show
May 30, 2010, 6:28 PM EDT

By Joe Carroll

May 30 (Bloomberg) -- BP Plc told U.S. regulators six weeks before its Gulf of Mexico
well blew out that workers had difficulty maintaining control, according to e-mails
released today by the House Energy and Commerce Committee investigating the spill.

A March 10 e-mail to Frank Patton, the Minerals Management Service’s drilling
engineer for the New Orleans district, from BP executive Scherie Douglas said the
company planned to sever the pipe connecting the well to the rig and plug the hole.

“We are in the midst of a well control situation on MC 252 #001 and have stuck
pipe,” Douglas wrote, referring to the subsea block, Mississippi Canyon 252, of the
stricken well. “We are bringing out equipment to begin operations to sever the
drillpipe, plugback the well and bypass.”

Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, a California Democrat,
and Representative Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the panel’s
oversight subcommittee, released the documents related to oil-well design, and e-
mails from March, February and November 2009. The documents “raise questions,
but their connection to the blowout, if any, require additional investigation,” the
lawmakers said.

The e-mails shows that as early as the second week of March, BP was enlisting help
from J. Connor Consulting Inc., a Houston-based firm that advises some of the
world’s biggest energy companies on how to respond to oil spills.

Federal regulators gave BP permission to cement the well at a shallower depth than
normally would have been required after the hole caved in on drilling equipment, the
e-mails showed.

Verbal Approval

BP’s Douglas, the senior regulatory and advocacy adviser for the company’s
exploration and production unit, received verbal approval from an unnamed MMS
official at 11 p.m. on March 11 to insert the cement plug about 750 feet (229 meters)
above the bottom of the hole, the e-mails showed.

The House committee is investigating the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers,
sank Transocean’s $365 million Deepwater Horizon rig, and triggered a spill that
threatens the Gulf Coast from Louisiana to Florida. The panel also is probing
equipment meant to prevent spills at deepwater wells and whether human error
played a role.

The New York Times reported today that internal BP documents showed “serious
problems and safety concerns” with the rig prior to the explosion that triggered the
largest oil spill in the nation’s history.

BP, the oil company that owned the well, yesterday stopped pumping heavy drilling
fluid into the well and is preparing to lower a containment cap over the gushing
wellhead, a process that may take four to seven days.   Waxman and Stupak on May
28 sent letters to clean-up consultants working for BP and Transocean, seeking
documents including contacts and emergency-response plans.

Letters were sent to O’Brien’s Response Management Inc. of Spring, Texas; Marine
Spill Response Corp. of Herndon, Virginia; and the National Response Corp. of Great
River, New York. National Response is a unit of Seacor Holdings Inc.

All three companies have service agreements with BP or Transocean, the committee
said in a statement.

--With assistance from Jim Snyder in Washington. Editors: Steve Geimann, Mark
Rohner

To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Carroll in Chicago at
jcarroll8 at bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Susan Warren at
susanwarren at bloomberg.net.