Although the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s investigation of the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) rig blowout and spill still is in its early stages, Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) last Wednesday said the committee had uncovered major discrepancies in the accounts of some of the companies involved.

Houston-based Halliburton, a major oilfield services company, “said it had secured the well through a procedure called cementing, and that the well had passed a key pressure test. But we now know that this is an incomplete account,” Waxman said during a hearing by the Subcommittee Oversight and Investigations into the April 20 rig explosion (see NGI, May 3).

The well passed a positive pressure test, but “there is evidence that it may not have passed [the] crucial negative pressure tests,” he said.

Transocean Ltd., the owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig, said it had “no reason to believe that the rig’s fail-safe device, called a blowout preventer (BOP), was not fully operational. But we’ve learned from Cameron, the manufacturer of the blowout preventer, that the device had a leak in a crucial hydraulic system and a defectively configured ram,” Waxman said.

“And we know there are major questions about the effectiveness of BP’s response to the spill. The company said it could manage a spill of 250,000 b/d, yet it’s struggling to cope with this blowout, which is releasing only 5,000 to 25,000 b/d,” he noted. Well owner BP leased the rig from Transocean.

Waxman said the committee will pursue four principle areas of inquiry, including:

“This catastrophe appears to have been caused by a calamitous series of equipment and operational failures,” according to Waxman, who said that the committee has received more than 100,000 pages of documents so far in its investigation.

At a separate hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last Tuesday, top executives with BP America Inc., Transocean and Halliburton defended their individual company’s actions and pointed fingers elsewhere.

BP America President Lamar McKay often reminded the panel that the Deepwater Horizon rig was owned and operated by Transocean, not BP. One of the key questions to be asked, he said, is “why did Transocean’s blowout preventer [BOP] — the key fail-safe mechanism — fail to shut in the well?”

Transocean President Steven Newman hinted that the fault may be with Halliburton, which provided cementing services on the doomed rig that now lies at the bottom of the GOM. “The well had been sealed with casing and cement. For that reason, the only thing we do know is that on the evening of April 20th there was a sudden catastrophic failure of the cement, casing or both. Without a failure of one of those elements, the explosion [would] not have occurred,” he said.

But Tim Probert, president of global business lines and chief health, safety and environmental officer for Halliburton, defended his company’s actions. While “we should not be making a rush to judgment,” there are a “few things [that] can be said with some certainty. The casing shoe was cemented some 20 hours prior to the incident, and had the BOP functioned as expected this catastrophe may well not have occurred,” he said.

In line with regulations of the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and at the direction of BP, “a positive pressure test was…conducted to demonstrate the integrity of the production casing string. The results of the positive test were reviewed by the well owner [BP] and a decision was made to proceed with the well program,” Probert noted, adding the explosion prevented Halliburton workers from setting the final cement plug.

Elmer Danenberger, former chief of the Offshore Regulatory Program at the MMS, said he believes that cementing may have “possibly played a significant role” in the disaster. It, along with BOP components, may require more standards, he noted.

Senators were unsuccessful in trying to get McKay to say that BP will pay more than what it is required under current law if the economic damages exceed the existing cap. Under current law, BP’s liability for economic damages from the oil spill is capped at $75 million — unless reckless actions by BP were responsible for the spill. If that turns out to be the case, BP’s liability would not be capped.

Democratic senators have introduced legislation to raise the capped amount to $10 billion and make it retroactive to apply to the BP spill. “I have not had a chance to look at any legislative proposals,” McKay said when asked about the bill. President Obama also has sent legislation to Congress to increase a producer’s liability for economic damages stemming from an oil spill (see related story).

“As a responsible party under the Oil Pollution Act, we will carry out our responsibilities to mitigate the environmental and economic impact of this incident,” McKay told the Senate energy panel.

Former MMS official Danenberger told the committee that he believes the “well will be killed” before the relief well is completed, which is estimated to take 90 days.

He also expressed support for creating a “truly independent safety and pollution prevention regulator that’s separate from the resource management and royalty collection function,” as Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced last Tuesday (see related story). “I think that concept may merit further attention.”

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