Oil Spill in the Gulf

Most Unreported Part of Gulf Oil Spill

The ED Show, MSNBC, April 30, 2010

Deepwater Horizon Safety Alerts were Bypassed to Avoid False Alarms, Witness Says

July 23, 2010

The Times-Picayune - The Deepwater Horizon had a general alarm to warn of dangerous gas leaks on the rig and automated emergency shutdown systems to keep gas out of the engine room and to prevent it from igniting on working electronics.

But rig leaders had decided to bypass those key safety functions before the disastrous explosions April 20, according to staggering testimony from the rig's chief electronics technician Friday.

The technician, Mike Williams, an employee of rig owner Transocean, said he didn't like the practice of "inhibiting" critical warning and safety systems. But higher-ups insisted on it for such reasons as not wanting to be awakened in the middle of the night.

The decision appears to have been a game-changer for the 11 men who were killed in the accident, especially those working on the drill floor at the time. When methane gas shot onto the rig a little before 10 p.m., the bypassed alarm meant the men on the drill floor had no audio or visual warning to help them escape; a bypassed control panel shutdown meant gas likely had an ignition source in the airtight drilling shack; and the lack of an emergency shutdown system left engines free to suck in more gaseous air, causing them to overspeed, explode and spread the fire.

"The well kicked, safety systems were inhibited or failed and men lost their lives," Williams said at the conclusion of his testimony. "Somehow we have to get to the bottom of it."

Williams told federal investigators that the rig's general alarm and indicator lights were set to "inhibited," meaning they would record high gas levels or fire in a computer, but wouldn't trigger any warning signals automatically.

"When I discovered they were inhibited a year ago I inquired why, and the explanation I got was that from the OIM (the top Transocean official on the rig) on down, they did not want people woken up at 3 a.m. due to false alarms," said Williams, who was responsible for fixing many of the rig's systems.

Williams said he took his concerns to two fellow rig workers before the accident.

"I told them that was unsatisfactory, just not in those words," he said. "They told me they had orders from the OIM and the master that the alarms were to be inhibited."

Transocean released a statement Friday to rebut its employee's testimony. The company said there are dozens of individual zone alarms that weren't bypassed, and leaving the general alarm to a manual control on the bridge is a normal industry practice.

"This is an option on each individual vessel designed to prevent the general alarm from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issue or a non-emergency," the statement said. "Repeated false alarms increase risk and decrease rig safety."

When gas shot up onto the rig, Williams said an emergency shutdown system, which was supposed to shut off the engines, didn't trip either. The engines ended up overspeeding by drawing power off the gas and Engine No. 3 exploded, Williams said.

Rig leaders had also decided to bypass a key system on the blowout preventer control panel that would have cut off the spark source if gas got in the drill shack, Williams testified. As it turned out, that's where gas apparently shot onto the rig and ignited, killing 11 workers.

Williams said he discovered that about five weeks before the accident, while he was trying to fix the gas-purging system. He said Mark Hay, the Transocean senior subsea supervisor, set the control panel system to bypass its gas shutdown function, and when Williams questioned him, Hay said there was no point in fixing it because none of the Transocean rigs use the safety system.

"He said, 'Damn thing been in bypass for five years. Matter of fact, the entire (Transocean) fleet runs them in bypass,'" Williams testified.

Williams also may have finally provided some clues as to why fluids seeped out through a valve in the well's blowout preventer during a final test of pressure in the well.

About five weeks before the accident, Williams was called to check on a computer system in the drill shack that was constantly on the fritz. While there, he saw a contract worker with chunks of rubber that had come up from the well. Williams was disturbed because the only rubber in the system would have been the crucial annular valve on the blowout preventer, the huge device that's supposed to close the well in an emergency.

But Hay assured Williams it was no big deal, Williams said.

Shortly after that, Williams was called into the blowout preventer control area to see why the drill pipe had moved while the annular valve was closed tight around it. He said he discovered a joystick controlling the pipe had been moved inadvertently, and he deduced that the rubber valve must have been damaged.

Transocean attorney Ned Kohnke suggested that Hay and others might have different information to suggest the annular valve was not closed around the pipe when the joystick was moved. Williams insisted that the pressure data he saw at the time indicate the valve was indeed closed.

Hay was supposed to testify before the Marine Board panel Wednesday but he didn't show up.

On April 20, the drilling team was surprised to find that high pressure wasn't enough to keep the annular valve closed during the negative pressure test. But the rig leaders decided to simply run the test again and, in spite of some confusion, deemed the test a success and OK'd the removal of protective drilling mud that might have stopped the fatal gas bulge.

Rig officials misinterpreted that test, said John Smith, an associate professor of petroleum engineering at Louisiana State University who was brought in as an expert witness. Smith also said that because of that misinterpretation, rig workers likely failed to recognize an initial kick of gas some 50 minutes before the accident. If they had recognized increases in fluid flow at that time as a kick, they might have been able to act earlier to stop operations.

The elusive meaning of the negative test is one of the biggest remaining mysteries of the events leading up to the spill.

A negative pressure test essentially checks if the well can hold its contents when it's shut in and pressure is exerted on it.

A good pressure test would mean no further tests would be necessary and the crew could safely remove the drilling mud that guards against gas kicking up through the riser pipe.

A bad pressure test would force BP to spend more time and money on further tests.

Everyone agreed the first test was unsuccessful because 15 barrels of mud were lost in the process. But, according to testimony, the crew simply tightened a valve and tried again.

The results of the second test have been a major source of confusion. John Guide, BP's well site supervisor in Houston, testified Thursday that the top company man on the rig, Robert Kaluza, told him he was confused by high pressure readings on the drill pipe during the second negative test. But Kaluza, who was new to the rig, said Transocean workers assured him it was not a problem, according to Guide, so the company interpreted the test results as successful.

Smith said there were actually four separate tests run, according to graphs of data made available by BP after the accident. He said none of them was successful. He said one of them may have been misinterpreted because the flow of fluid out of the well stopped. But there was heavier-than-usual fluid in the tubes feeding into the blowout preventer. Smith said that if that fluid wasn't recognized as the reason for the stopped flow, the results could have tricked the workers.

"The symptoms are a successful test," said Smith, who spent 23 years as a drilling engineer for AMOCO before becoming an academic. "But the reality is it's not a test at all. (That's) my opinion."

He said full records of what was going on in the rig's drill shack are not available because workers never got a chance to write out more detailed records. But based on meters tracking the movement of fluids, Smith believes it's likely the well started kicking gas about 9 p.m., about 50 minutes before gas kicked out of control and exploded.

He said the drillers probably ignored signs of a kick at that point because they thought they had a successful pressure test.

"They think they've already proven the well's safe. That's a reason to reduce your rigor," he said.