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WASHINGTON -A Halliburton Co. executive on Sunday challenged BP PLC (BP, BP.LN)'s claims that the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history started with faulty cement.
"There were a number of red flags that should have given pause to BP," Thomas Roth, vice president of cementing for Halliburton, told a National Academy of Engineering panel investigating the causes of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. He said that "BP proceeded with well operations without establishing well integrity."
BP has said that the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig began because the cement foam that Halliburton developed and pumped in the well was likely unstable. Though the oil company has also identified other failures, BP's analysis of what went wrong has put a large share of the blame on Halliburton.
BP has said that "fluid loss control additives" were not used in the cement, and that the cement mix was "not fully tested" before the cement job.
Halliburton's Roth said that testing in advance showed that "the foam system was stable." He said that foam cement has "very good fluid loss control by its basic design," and that more than 400 hours of lab testing were conducted in the planning of the well. Roth reiterated Halliburton's claim that BP should have conducted a test known as a cement bond-log test. Mark Bly, BP's head of safety and operations, has said that deciding not to conduct the test "wasn't a wrong choice." He said the rig workers should have more fully evaluated the risks that the well was not intact, but "the fact of not using a cement bond log at that point--we didn't see was in and of itself a problem."
"There were a number of red flags that should have given pause to BP," Thomas Roth, vice president of cementing for Halliburton, told a National Academy of Engineering panel investigating the causes of the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion. He said that "BP proceeded with well operations without establishing well integrity."
BP has said that the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig began because the cement foam that Halliburton developed and pumped in the well was likely unstable. Though the oil company has also identified other failures, BP's analysis of what went wrong has put a large share of the blame on Halliburton.
BP has said that "fluid loss control additives" were not used in the cement, and that the cement mix was "not fully tested" before the cement job.
Halliburton's Roth said that testing in advance showed that "the foam system was stable." He said that foam cement has "very good fluid loss control by its basic design," and that more than 400 hours of lab testing were conducted in the planning of the well. Roth reiterated Halliburton's claim that BP should have conducted a test known as a cement bond-log test. Mark Bly, BP's head of safety and operations, has said that deciding not to conduct the test "wasn't a wrong choice." He said the rig workers should have more fully evaluated the risks that the well was not intact, but "the fact of not using a cement bond log at that point--we didn't see was in and of itself a problem."