Friday, May 14, 2010

Phantom test

Rig explodes at 10:00 PM. Data is only current until 3:00 PM. During that seven hours somebody made a fateful decision based on... what?
(Rig workers' attorney Tony) Buzbee said that when Halliburton showed BP PLC and Transocean officials the results of the pressure tests that suggested gas was leaking, the rig workers were put on "standby." BP is the rig operator and leaseholder.

Buzbee said one of his clients told him the "Transocean and BP company people got their heads together," and 40 minutes later gave the green light.

The attorney said the Halliburton crew members were not shown any new test results.

"They said they did their own tests, and they came out Oklahoma," he said. "But with the phantom test that Transocean and BP allegedly did, there was no real record or real-time recordation of that test."

Buzbee suggested that BP and Transocean had monetary reasons for ignoring the earlier tests.

"The facts are as they are," he said. "The rig is $500,000 a day. There are bonuses for finishing early."


The "missing seven hours" business could get interesting. And no, I don't mean interesting in the fun "look what's in Ray Nagin's email" way. Nothing Nagin lied about ever resulted in eleven horrifying deaths and the destruction of an irreplaceable coastal estuary.

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