Why Senior Management at BP's Should Be In a Deep Dark Hole

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The Crime Scene

Hours before the Deepwater Horizon exploded, representatives of Slumberger^*, who had been called in to perform a "Cement Bond Log (CBL) " test.

Slumberger, much like Halliburton, is primarily an oil services firm, though it's rep is as the Cadillac of the service companies, and is, unlike Halliburton, considered to be highly ethical.

Well, they were getting ready to run the test, about 6 hours before the blowout and explosion, and they look at the numbers, and say shut down the operation now, and when the BP management says, "no", they ask to be flown off, and BP refuses, so they call in a Slumberger helicopter to get the hell out of dodge:

BP contracted Schlumberger (SLB) to run the Cement Bond Log (CBL) test that was the final test on the plug that was skipped. The people testifying have been very coy about mentioning this, and you’ll see why.

SLB is an extremely highly regarded (and incredibly expensive) service company. They place a high standard on safety and train their workers to shut down unsafe operations.

SLB gets out to the Deepwater Horizon to run the CBL, and they find the well still kicking heavily,^† which it should not be that late in the operation. SLB orders the “company man” (BP’s man on the scene that runs the operation) to dump kill fluid down the well and shut-in the well. The company man refuses. SLB in the very next sentence asks for a helo to take all SLB personel back to shore. The company man says there are no more helo’s scheduled for the rest of the week (translation: you’re here to do a job, now do it). SLB gets on the horn to shore, calls SLB’s corporate HQ, and gets a helo flown out there at SLB’s expense and takes all SLB personel to shore.

6 hours later, the platform explodes.

Note that we do have confirmation that this cement bond log test was never conducted:

BP hired a top oilfield service company to test the strength of cement linings on the Deepwater Horizon's well, but sent the firm's workers home 11 hours before the rig exploded April 20 without performing a final check that a top cementing company executive called "the only test that can really determine the actual effectiveness" of the well's seal.

A spokesman for the testing firm, Schlumberger, said BP had a Schlumberger team and equipment for sending acoustic testing lines down the well "on standby" from April 18 to April 20. But BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m., Schlumberger spokesman Stephen T. Harris said.

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Schlumberger's Harris said the contractor was ready to do any such wireline tests, but was never directed to do so. The team had finished doing tests on the subsea layers of earth being drilled five days earlier and hadn't done any work since, Harris said.

In fact, Harris said there was no time to get the company's wireline testing equipment off the rig before it exploded.

So BP's side of the story is that they hired the most expensive, top of the line, oil field services company out there to run a test, and never bothered to let them complete what they had paid for, and the time line is a bit different.

But what is clear is that Slumberger left, and they left their very expensive equipment in their haste to get off the platform, because they saw a disaster coming, and they could not stop it.

H/t Thom Hartmann.

^*Full disclosure, one of my step-mother's oldest and dearest friends was a Slumberger, yes, one of those Slumbergers.
^†Basically, as they drill a well, they add fluid (mud) to balance the pressure so that it does not erupt out of the well head. When a well is "kicking", it means that the pressure is not properly balanced and the oil/gas/water is blowing out the mud. See the Wiki.