BP engineer who wrote telling e-mails pleads the Fifth to avoid testifying at oil spill hearings

[tabatha]

Brian Morel, a BP engineer who was part of a team that designed the Macondo well that blew April 20, is the second witness to invoke his constitutional right to not answer questions from a joint Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management panel.

William W. Taylor, Morel's attorney, appeared before the panel Tuesday and said Morel would have declined to answer any questions from the panel, citing his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Morel is significant because of e-mail messages he sent and received in the days leading up to the disaster. Those messages were released by a congressional committee.

In one, Morel referred to the project as a "nightmare well." In another, he commented on the time and money BP would save by using a single, long production string of casing in the middle of the well, rather than another plan that would have shut off the space through which dangerous gas could flow.

http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/08/oil_spill_hearings_bp_engineer.html