Among much hoopla Thursday, the Presidential Oil Spill Commission released a letter from lawyer Fred Bartlit, Jr., saying that 3 of 4 tests that Halliburton conducted of the cement designed for BP's Macondo well were unstable. They also published a report of tests performed by Chevron that all nine of their tests using Halliburton ingredients showed it as unstable. One of Halliburton's tests run prior to the actual cement job showed that formulation to be stable and work. The letter also stated that the communication about the instability of the slurries between Halliburton and BP was unclear, and that BP may not have even read the report until after the blowout had occurred.
The media and stock market immediately jumped to the conclusion that Halliburton was at fault, and shares of the company dropped about 8% in value when the news hit. The problem is, though, that this report issued by the commission doesn't matter. While interesting and demonstrative of the instability of nitrified cements, the main message here is that bad cement does not equal blowout. Bad cement jobs in the oil and gas industry are common, and there are several ways to remediate those bad jobs after the fact. It's very difficult to determine if a cement job is not effective, even with a bond log, especially in the early hours after a cement job has been pumped. Bond logs are often inconclusive and the longer cement has to hydrate and gain compressive strength, the higher the likelihood of a better log. As we all know from the Deepwater Horizon story, there were only about 16 hours from the time the cement job was pumped to the negative test, riser displacement, and the subsequent blowout.
The overriding issues here are casing design and risk management. Relying solely on the cement job to prevent the well from coming to see them was poor decision making. I continue to believe that their decision to run only the long string, rather than a liner/tieback combination, as well as the decisions to not wait on more centralizers or to not circulate bottoms up, was BP and Transocean's concern about getting pipe to bottom and getting cement in place, not money. This well had been scary difficult to drill, losing circulation, then kicking, that they just wanted to get off as quickly as possible. This rush to get the well finished lead to the disaster. Add that to displacing the riser with seawater with questionable well integrity was the final straw. After the blowout, the inhibited alarms and safety shutdowns on the Transocean rig proved deadly.
This disaster was certainly preventable and caused by poor design, poor decision making, and rushing to get the well completed. The tragic consequences should be a lesson to the entire industry, but I'm not holding my breath.
I'm in the camp that hears the name Haliburton and immediately concludes that they must be responsible for anything that has gone wrong, but when all is said and done, I suspect that BP will be found liable.
If Halliburton's Jesse Gagliano is found to be credible, I think the only conclusion you can draw is that BP was willing to accept the risk that their remediation plans were sufficient to justify cutting corners, thus saving huge dollars in terms of days to completion and equipment and manpower costs.
Gagliano testified that he recommended 21 centralizers and BP chose not to follow his recommendation. He claims that when he was told they would use fewer, he provided models that showed channeling and gas flow potentials increased with decreasing numbers of centralizers.
All of the players talked about a culture where any member was encouraged to stop the job, but most of us know how that works in the real world and I don't think anyone below the rank of VP would have dared to speak up.
I always make my way here whenever the mostly moribund Deep Water Horizon story gets some much needed, if not always accurate, attention from the press. I'm never disappointed.
Yes, their history is checkered with serious incidents. Boycotting does not hurt BP, only independent owners.
Thanks Bob, for putting perspective in place, again. Youve done a great job all along and
I thank you.
People such as yourself are the difference
in doing a good job, vs get'er done corp
profits for the 2%.
Consequences of human existence on this planet can truly be breathtaking though, and from the Space Shuttle explosion to the Horizon disaster, we will continue to have glorious episodes of idiocy.
The Darwin Award finalist has yet to be determined...
Bob,
B.P. has a history of being very accident prone don't they? What do you think of the idea of citizens boycotting their products? If so, is simply not filling up at their stations going to help? (I heard that they are independently owned)
Thanks!