The Gulf Finger Pointers Were All Right!

That link from Diane is a gift that keeps giving.  Here’s an analysis of what went wrong.

Bad wiring and a leak in what’s supposed to be a "blowout preventer." Sealing problems that may have allowed a methane eruption. Even a dead battery, of all things.

New disclosures Wednesday revealed a complex cascade of deep-sea equipment failures and procedural problems in the oil rig explosion and massive spill that is still fouling the waters of the Gulf of Mexico and threatening industries and wildlife near the coast and on shore.

The public also got its first look on Wednesday of oil gushing from the broken pipe that rests nearly a mile under water as BP PLC, the well’s operator, released a video taken by a remotely controlled camera. Oil flowing from a break in the yellowish pipe becomes lighter in color as it mixes with natural gas. Over the past 21 days more than 4 million gallons of oil have been released.

A litany of worrisome events and findings that were at play on the night of the well explosion and pipe rupture was described in internal corporate documents, marked confidential but provided to a House committee by BP and by the manufacturer of the safety device. Lawmakers released them at a House hearing.

A senior BP executive, Lamar McKay, cautioned, "It’s inappropriate to draw any conclusions before all the facts are known." But the documents established the firmest evidence to date of the sequence of catastrophic events that led to the explosion and worsening spill, a series of failures more reminiscent of the loss of the space shuttle Challenger than the wreck of the Exxon Valdez.

Like the 1986 Challenger disaster, the investigation into the Gulf spill may well show that complex and seemingly failproof technical systems went wrong because of overlooked problems that interacted with each other in unexpected ways. In the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster, a captain simply ran his ship onto a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, spilling nearly 11 million gallons of oil.

The April 20 BP rig explosion 40 miles off the Louisiana coast killed 11 people. Oil continuing to flow into Gulf waters threatens sensitive ecological marshes and wetlands and the region’s fishing industry.

Congressional investigators revealed Wednesday that a key safety system, known as the blowout preventer, used in BP’s oil-drilling rig in the Gulf had a hydraulic leak and a failed battery that probably prevented it from working as designed.

They said that BP documents and others also indicated conflicting pipe pressure tests should have warned those on the rig that poor pipe integrity may have been allowing explosive methane gas to leak into the well.

"Significant pressure discrepancies were observed in at least two of these tests, which were conducted just hours before the explosion," said Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., at a House hearing on the rig fire and oil leak, citing documents his committee had received from BP.

Asked about the tests, Steven Newman, president of Transocean, which owned the drilling rig, and Lamar McKay, president of BP America told the committee the pressure readings were worrisome.

They indicated "that there was something happening in the well bore that shouldn’t be happening," said Newman. McKay said the issue "is critical in the investigation" into the cause of the accident.

The well explosion unleashed a massive oil spill that after three weeks remains uncontained.

But Waxman said important elements of what went wrong were beginning to surface.

While "we have far more questions than answers," it appears clear that there were problems with the blowout preventers before the accident and confusion almost right up to the time of the explosion over the success of a process in which cement is injected into the well to temporarily close it in anticipation of future production… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <The Bay Ledger>

To clarify, the purpose of the pressure testing was to affirm the integrity of the cementing operation Halliburton had just performed.  Here’s Keith Olbermann with more:

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I won’t comment on the Lieberman-Kerry Bill here, because two I posted an Action Alert to oppose it two pieces down.

Keith reported that the rig workers did not know a blowout preventer had been modified and because the modification did not show in their engineering documents, but did not say why.  I revealed  that BP was falsifying their engineering reports on May 4, nine days ago.  Two days ago, I posted that all the companies are pointing fingers at each other.  All the finger pointers are right.

One more thing.  The chemicals that BP is pumping into the gulf to disperse the spill are lethal to coral.  The loss of Florida’s reef system, one of the most diverse habitats in the world.  Its loss would be an unprecedented ecological disaster, not to mention that many of our most advanced medicines are harvested there and available nowhere else.

Corporations are NOT people!  Money is NOT speech!