Gulf oil spill: The Halliburton connection, © The L.A. Times, April 30, 2010, by Margot Roosevelt and Jill Leovy, Updates and commentary update as of May 4, 2010, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Investigators delving into the possible cause of the massive gulf oil spill are focusing on the role of Houston-based Halliburton Co., the giant energy services company, which was responsible for cementing the drill into place below the water. The company acknowledged Friday that it had completed the final cementing of the oil well and pipe just 20 hours before the blowout last week.

In a letter to to Halliburton Chief Executive David J. Lesar…, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, called on Halliburton officials to provide all documents relating to “the possibility or risk of an explosion or blowout at the Deepwater Horizon rig and the status, adequacy, quality, monitoring, and inspection of the cementing work” by May 7 (2010).

In a statement (the same day), Halliburton said “it is premature and irresponsible to speculate on any specific causal issues.” The company had four employees stationed on the rig at the time of the accident, all of whom were rescued by the Coast Guard. “Halliburton had completed the cementing of the final production casing string in accordance with the well design,” it said. “The cement slurry design was consistent with that utilized in other similar applications. In accordance with accepted industry practice … tests demonstrating the integrity of the production casing string were completed.”

More than two dozen class action lawsuits have been filed after the explosion against BP PLC, the British company that leased the Deepwater Horizon rig, against the rig’s owner, Transocean Ltd. and against Halliburton. BP is “taking full responsibility” for the spill and will pay for legitimate claims by affected parties, company spokeswoman Sheila Williams said.

Cement is used at two stages of the deep-water drilling process. … ((Read about the rather interesting process of cementing in a well in the original article.))

Cementing a deep-water drilling operation is a process fraught with danger. A 2007 study by the U.S. Minerals Management Service found that cementing was the single most important factor in 18 of 39 well blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico over a 14-year period — more than equipment malfunction. Halliburton has been accused of a poor cement job in the case of a major blowout in the Timor Sea off Australia last August. An investigation is underway.

According to experts cited in (the) Wall St. Journal, the timing of last week’s cement job in relation to the explosion — only 20 hours beforehand, and the history of cement problems in other blowouts “point to it as a possible culprit.” Robert MacKenzie, managing director of energy and natural resources at FBR Capital Markets and a former cementing engineer, told the Journal, “The initial likely cause of gas coming to the surface had something to do with the cement.”

Read the full article, here

Interview with a Transocean Horizon
Oil Rig Survivor

Read the transcript of this interview, here.

Watch and read, Michael Brown: Obama Wanted Oil Spill (VIDEO), The Huffinton Post, May 3, 2010, by HuffPo: “Once an idiot, always an idiot.”

UPDATED: Animation: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Growth and Movement

Watch, BP Oil Spill Worsens With No Solution in Sight, 210,000 Gallons a Day Spew into Gulf of Mexico, Democracy Now, May 3, 2010 — 29:55.

Be sure to check out MoveToAmend.org, a project of the CAMPAIGN TO LEGALIZE DEMOCRACY:

On January 21, 2010, with its ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are persons, entitled by the U.S. Constitution to buy elections and run our government. Human beings are people; corporations are legal fictions. The Supreme Court is misguided in principle, and wrong on the law. In a democracy, the people rule.
We Move to Amend.
We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, and move to amend our Constitution to:

1. * Firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights.
2. * Guarantee the right to vote and to participate, and to have our votes and participation count.
3. * Protect local communities, their economies, and democracies against illegitimate “preemption” actions by global, national, and state governments.

UPDATE: Read, On Defensive, BP Readies Dome to Contain Spill, © The New York Times, May 3, 2010, by Ian Urbina, Justin Gillis and Clifford Krauss, excerpt quoted verbatim:

… lawyers representing environmental groups, workers from the oil rig and fishermen who have been hurt by the leak leveled fresh accusations against BP, as well as Transocean and Halliburton. BP leased the rig from Transocean. Halliburton was providing several services on the rig, including cementing, which is a method of sealing the well to control pressure from the oil and gas beneath.

At least one worker who was on the oil rig at the time of the explosion on April 20, and who handled company records for BP, said the rig had been drilling deeper than 22,000 feet, even though the company’s federal permit allowed it to go only 18,000 to 20,000 feet deep, the lawyers said.

BP strongly denied the claim that it was drilling deeper than was allowed.

UPDATE: See, Nelson: Did Big Oil quash safety regulations?, Salon, May 3, 2010, by Mark Benjamin, excerpt quoted verbatim:

In response to the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., is asking the Interior Department’s inspector general to review “the extent to which the oil and natural gas industry exercised influence” over the development of drilling safety regulations.

In particular, Nelson wants to know if the industry has resisted fitting underwater wells with a device that remotely activates “blowout preventers” — shut-off valves that, in the event of an emergency, seal a wellhead and prevent oil gushers. At least two other countries require that underwater wells be equipped with an audio signal that remotely activates the preventer, but not the United States.

Nelson wants the inspector general to look into possible oil industry influence into that and “all other regulations relevant to blowout preventers and well controls.”

BP says it is unclear if the device would have prevented this spill, which is dumping over 200,000 gallons of oil into the Gulf every day. The acoustic switches cost about $500,000 each, which is decimal dust compared to what the oil spill will cost.

UPDATE: Read, Obama Admin Warned by NOAA It Was Underestimating Offshore Drilling Risks– To Be Expected Given Big Money, OpEdNews, May 4, 2010, by Rob Kall.

Read, BP Describes Race to Fix Well as Obama Warns of Oil Damage, The New York Times, May 2, 2010, by Campbell Robertson and Henry Fountain, excerpt quoted verbatim:

NEW ORLEANS — President Obama visited Louisiana on Sunday afternoon for a firsthand look at the response effort to an oil spill that he called a “potentially unprecedented environmental disaster,” while officials for BP described in detail their desperate efforts to seal the gushing well.

“The oil that is still leaking from the well could seriously damage the economy and the environment of our gulf states and it could extend for a long time,” Mr. Obama said. “It could jeopardize the livelihoods of thousands of Americans who call this place home.”

Over the next two days, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said, the slick appears likely to move toward the Alabama and Florida coasts and engulf the Chandeleur Islands off Louisiana’s southeast tip.

Read, Deepwater Horizon oil spill: Barack Obama flies in amid mounting criticism, The Guardian, May 2, 2010, by Ed Pilkington.

Barack Obama was heading into the centre of the crisis over the massive oil spillage in the Gulf of Mexico today amid growing criticism that the US administration and the oil company BP were failing to get a grip on the potential environmental catastrophe.

The president flew into New Orleans and was due to travel on by helicopter to Venice, a small fishing town at the mouth of the Mississippi that has become the command post for the rapidly escalating rescue preparations.

With the memory of George Bush’s delayed appearance in the region after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 clearly in mind, the Obama administration has made sure it has been highly visible since the crisis began on 20 April with the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, about 50 miles south of the Louisiana coast. It has also been working hard to neutralise Republican claims that it has been slow to react as the scale of the leak became known.

Read and watch: Gulf oil spill swiftly balloons, may move east, USA Today, May 1, 2010, by The Associated Press, excerpt quoted verbatim:

Watch, New Orleans fears new disaster, AlJazeera English YouTube video, May 1, 2010 — 2:00.

Watch, BP Unable to Plug Oil Well, CBS News video on YouTube, May 2, 2010 — 7:30.

Read, Gulf of Mexico worst Case Scenarios– Listing the Players and Possible Terrorist or Nuke Tie-in, OpEdNews, May 2, 2010, by Rob Kall.

Commentary by Evans Liberal Politics owner Paul Evans: In 1984 I myself worked as a cementer for the Wooster, Ohio field office of Halliburton. It was backbreaking work, but the pay was very good. I remember struggling to drag pipe through hip deep mud in some of Ohio’s oil well locations. I also remember working thirty or more straight hours on the job…. It would be several straight days “on call” and then maybe several straight days off duty and off work.

When you were on call, you could work a lot of hours in a row, and that included driving tear drop cement trucks at questionable speeds on rural roads when you’d been at work for twenty or thirty hours. I remember having worked about twenty-five or so straight hours and coming back into the yard at three thirty in the morning and getting sent out again on another job. These working conditions are the norm at Halliburton’s facilities, at least they were in the mid 1980s. The reason for it is pretty obvious: Halliburton pays relatively high wages, and the fewer workers they have to hire to make up their local work force, the higher the profits, since the work is not so regular and the oil field service industry goes through spurts of activity and inactivity.

There were only four Halliburton employees stationed on the Gulf of Mexico rig when it suffered the blow-out…. However, apparently a crew handling casing on a rig in the Gulf is often no larger than two men. “Need pr” comments on this article at Daily Kos: “There will be a weight log on the cement to show how consistent the cement job was. They should have taken samples to test the strength of the cement. I hate Halliburton but I seriously doubt this (is their) fault. There is a audio from a worker that was on the rig available and it sounds like they failed to notice the pressure on the well head when they opened the BOP.”

Need pr continues: “they had salt water in the production tubing when they opened the Blow Our Preventer (BOP). The well had a gas kick and blew the salt water out of the tubing. The pressure was so great that that it blew the water 200 feet in the air, the gas settled around the rig and that’s what caused the initial explosion. The link is on Hurricane Trackers website and I believe the audio was from a right wing radio show who was trying to claim terrorism. The caller was listening to the show and gives a detail account of the initial problem.”

No doubt the company was cutting corners and working their employees long hours, but this whole process is very much inherently dangerous. We need to understand that eleven men died here…. to talk about terrorism or fault is outrageous, please listen to the interview with the Transocean Horizon oil rig survivor, above. He states that the cause could have been simply a once in a lifetime event, or it might as everyone fears have been negligence, but that the well had passed every test and the crew had even been given an award for safety. Of course the report on this has not yet come out.

In my case, when I was working for Halliburton, at the time I medically needed to take tranquilizers for my health, and they found out about it and gave me the option of being fired or resigning, so of course I resigned. Nowadays workers cannot be fired just because they need tranquilizers, but at the time, that law didn’t exist, and Halliburton’s insurance didn’t cover their drivers if they took tranquilizers, so that was the end of that job for me. I wasn’t having any problems with management or my job, their insurance just didn’t cover them for me, so I was out of luck.

You may remember that former Vice President Dick Cheney was the head of Halliburton from 1995 until 2000. During his tenure there, the number of offshore subsidiaries of Halliburton increased from 9 to 44. Last year — or was it as far back ago as 2007, when they opened the offices, there — of course, the company itself transferred it’s focus of operations to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I’m sure there’s a huge tax break involved in THAT decision, right?

*****

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