NYT: Questions About Halliburton's Role in the Explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Rig in the Gulf

[flpoljunkie]

4:14 P.M. Questions About Halliburton’s Role

“If unchecked, it will take about 50 days for the leak to eclipse the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, the worst U.S. oil spill on record that sent 10.8 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound,” Reuters explains. The news agency adds: “Shares of companies that provided services or operated the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, including Halliburton and Transocean, fell sharply as worry mounted about liability from the spill.”

What role did Halliburton play in the operation of the rig that exploded last week, setting off the spill? Russell Gold and Ben Casselman of The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday:

An oil-drilling procedure called cementing is coming under scrutiny as a possible cause of the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico that has led to one of the biggest oil spills in U.S. history, drilling experts said Thursday.

The process is supposed to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. Cement, pumped down the well from the drilling rig, is also used to plug wells after they have been abandoned or when drilling has finished but production hasn’t begun.

In the case of the Deepwater Horizon, workers had finished pumping cement to fill the space between the pipe and the sides of the hole and had begun temporarily plugging the well with cement; it isn’t known whether they had completed the plugging process before the blast. <...>

The scrutiny on cementing will focus attention on Halliburton Co., the oilfield-services firm that was handling the cementing process on the rig, which burned and sank last week. <...>

According to Transocean Ltd., the operator of the drilling rig, Halliburton had finished cementing the 18,000-foot well shortly before the explosion. <...>

The timing of the cementing in relation to the blast—and the procedure’s history of causing problems—point to it as a possible culprit in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, experts said.

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/30/updates-on-the-oil-slick-in-the-gulf-of-mexico/?hp

[BeyondGeography]

1. I see lawyers

Hordes of lawyers.

[Brother Buzz]

2. Do seriously believe Halliburton lawyers are going to role up their sleeves....

and help clean-up the oil?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. I hope that it wasn't sabotage?

[chollybocker]

4. OMG!

As the diner said to the waiter, "The shrimp are revolting."