Consumer Law

Halliburton's Cement Failures

By Joe Consumer

If you go down the list of Halliburton?s misdeeds at the website Halliburton Watch, there?s more than enough to be concerned about.  Fraud, bribery, waste, abuse, faulty work and war profiteering at the company once led by Dick Cheney.  (For even more, see The Daily Show's 2007 take, below!)  There?s also the Jamie Leigh Jones gang rape case involving the company, which we?ve covered many times.) 

You can also find lots of posts about Halliburton?s role in the Deepwater Horizon explosion, but most people haven?t heard much about it.  That?s about to change.

Today, the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill released its ?first official finding of responsibility for the blowout? and found, ?Halliburton and BP knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job.?  (Full report here.)

Moreover, ?if the cement had done its job and kept the highly pressured oil and gas out of the well bore, there would not have been an accident.?

Bloomberg writes, ?Halliburton and BP both had results in March showing that a very similar foam slurry design to the one actually pumped at the Macondo well would be unstable, but neither acted upon that data,? according to a letter sent to the commissioners from the panel?s chief counsel Fred Bartlit and other staff members. ? Hearings will be held on these preliminary findings in Washington on November 8 and 9."

Of course, as the New York Times points out, ?even if the cement failed on the BP well, it was not the whole story of the accident. Many human and mechanical failures combined to create the disaster, he said, and backup systems were skipped or ignored.?

NEXT ?

Full post as published by ThePopTort on October 28, 2010 (boomark / email).