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29 Oct 2010 16:36

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Biz, U.S.: Here comes the denial: Halliburton sez they didn’t cause oil spill

  • Halliburton does not believe that the foam cement design used on the Macondo well was the cause of the incident.
  • A statement from Halliburton • Responding to the Senate committee report that suggested that their handiwork was a cause of the Gulf Oil Spill. Their take? While Halliburton admits that they didn’t do a key stability test, BP was to blame for a poor design process (an angle they’ve held onto since the spill first happened). And, worse, BP didn’t perform a critical cement bond log test. Also, both BP and Transocean misinterpreted the results of a negative pressure test – a misinterpretation that proved deadly for the workers on the rig. There are a lot of complicated details here, but the point you should take from this is that everyone is blaming everyone else. Which is understandable. Have you seen the rage caused by this oil spill? source

08 Sep 2010 11:07

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U.S.: Gulf oil spill: BP tries to shift some of the blame with report

  • The company just released a 193-page report on the spill. Claiming “a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces,” BP’s new report tries to spread the blame in a number of places, noting some design flaws but also focusing more on the cement job on the well (done by Haliburton) and failings of the workers on the rig (who were Transocean employees) and trying not to shoulder all the blame themselves. Consider the report an attempt at shoring up PR and a preview of future court cases. source

30 Aug 2010 09:10

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Biz: BP partly pins oil spill blame on engineers who can’t read

  • Apparently, they misread an April 20 report on the well. Remember this thing and how it used to be in the news every day? Yeah. Anyway, Bloomberg’s reporting that, according to a BP internal investigation, managers on the rig misread a report saying that pressure levels were very high, leading to the Deepwater Horizon’s destruction. Attorneys for BP have also worked on sullying the names of Transocean and Haliburton, which thus far haven’t stuck. source

23 Jul 2010 17:39

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U.S.: Deepwater Horizon’s alarm too noisy, so they shut it off

  • Apparently, there were a lot of false alarms. They apparently were annoying and woke up sleeping workers. That’s what a chief technician for Transocean, the company that ran the oil rig, said about the reasons that safety systems were knowingly turned off – which helped lead to the disaster that killed 11 people and caused the ocean to flood with oil. In other oil-company-friendly news, BP got transparent about their Photoshopped images and posted a set of images up on Flickr – the ‘chopped images and the originals. Which is funny, because none of the images needed any Photoshopping at all. source

22 Jun 2010 11:03

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Biz: Nooooo … really? Oil companies want deepwater drilling ban to end

  • There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit.
  • Transocean CEO Steven Newman • Arguing that the U.S. should back off its somewhat controversial deepwater drilling ban. (His company ran the Deepwater Horizon.) He’s not alone – the BBC quotes Chevron and BP execs (not Tony Hayward) saying similar things. The oil industry is pushing against the regulations and a court decision about the drilling ban is forthcoming. Haley Barbour got a lot of crap about making a similar statement recently, despite the fact that BP is paying workers who have been laid off due to the spill. source