Concrete Was Faulty In Deepwater Horizon Oil Well

Nov. 12, 2010 - PRLog -- The latest research on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil well disaster revealed that Houston-based Halliburton understand that the cement it was using to seal the well was likely to be unstable. The company did not report to BP or proceed on the information itself, before the well exploded on April 20th.

The failure of the cement was a major factor in the blowout, the company employees firmly believe, which resulted in millions of barrels of crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico over a twelve-week-long period.

The employees feel the blame should be definitely placed on BP and Transocean, the company hired by BP to drill the well. They also still pointed out that the unstable cement was not the only factor to be held responsible.

The report continued ‘BP and or Transocean personnel misinterpreted or chose not to conduct tests at the Macondo well which would have identified any cement failures.’

Safety procedures designed to ward off such accidents were overlooked or ignored. In a September report BP acknowledged that its internal survey had found that cementing tests were misinterpreted, or were not run.

The workers of Halliburton claim that similar oversights are widespread in the offshore oil drilling industry.

As the last step before assigning a drilling rig to another location, oil-drilling companies use cement to seal an exploratory well like the Deepwater Horizon. Once the seal is in place, technicians remove heavy drilling mud from the well and replace it with lighter sea water. It was during this step that hydrocarbons surged up the Deepwater Horizon drill pipe and enveloped the rig in a cloud of methane. The following explosion killed 11 workers and set off the biggest accidental oil spill in history.

Faulty Halliburton cement is alleged in the explosion last year, of a well in the Timor Sea near Australia. Halliburton is one of the world’s biggest providers of oil-well cementing services.

Craig Gardner, Chevron’s cementing team leader, told the investigating commission “We were unable to generate stable foam from any of the tests”. Several tests conducted, using a duplicate of Halliburton’s cementing mixture failed to create any stable cement.

Halliburton acknowledged that the Chevron laboratory was highly qualified in conducting the tests.

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