New York: BP officials overseeing the Macondo well that spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico ignored questions about whether safety tests done hours before a fatal blast on the drilling rig were flawed, lawyers for Transocean said in a court filing.
Donald Vidrine, the senior BP manager on the Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20, 2010, talked with an engineer about unsatisfactory well tests less than an hour before an explosion killed 11 workers on the rig and sent oil pouring into the waters off Louisiana, Transocean's attorneys said in a filing tied to a trial set for Sunday, with billions of dollars at stake.
Transocean owned the rig and was drilling in a well owned by BP and other partners.
Displacement
While Mark Hafle, a Houston-based BP drilling engineer, warned Vidrine in a phone call that stability tests on the well might be flawed, "neither man stopped work" at the facility, Transocean officials said in the filing on Friday.
The BP officials allowed crews to continue displacing drilling fluid in the well with seawater, the company's lawyers said in the filing.
Once the fluid was removed, the lighter seawater couldn't hold back natural gas leaking into the well, which led to the explosion, according to the filing.
The filing came three days before BP, Transocean, the US government and plaintiffs suing over the oil spill are scheduled to begin a trial in New Orleans to apportion blame for the disaster and determine exposure to punitive damages.
US District Judge Carl Barbier, who will hear the case without a jury, is to rule whether BP should get help from the other firms involved in paying the $26 billion (Dh95.42 billion) in costs associated with the disaster and its resulting offshore spill, the largest in US history.
Refusal to testify
Scott Dean, a spokesman for London-based BP, declined to comment on Saturday on the Transocean filing. Mitchell Lansden, a lawyer for Hafle, didn't immediately return a call seeking comment late on Saturday.
Vidrine has refused to testify about his actions on the rig, citing medical-related problems. His lawyer, Robert N. Habans Jr, did not return phone and email messages seeking comment on the filing.
The Macondo well blowout sent almost 5 million barrels of oil into the gulf for more than 80 days, according to a US government report issued in September.
Consolidated cases
The accident spawned hundreds of lawsuits against BP and its partners, including Vernier, Switzerland-based Trans-ocean, and Houston-based Halliburton Co, which provided cementing services for the well.
The lawsuits include pollution claims by federal and state governments and consolidated cases brought by thousands of commercial fishermen, seafood processors, property owners and tourism-related businesses.
Transocean officials have urged Barbier to force Vidrine to testify, calling him in court filings a "key source of information regarding critical events and operations that occurred immediately prior to the blowout".
