A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [10]
But months later in September, BP’s own internal investigation concluded, “The BP Macondo team erroneously believed that they had received the wrong centralizers.”
In late July 2010, examiners from BP contractors Anadarko, Transocean, and Halliburton questioned Guide on his decisions.
Q: “That left you several days to get whatever centralizers you felt might be needed.”
Guide: “I didn’t feel they were needed.”
Q: “So what you’re telling me is that there was just no discussion among you between you and Mr. Walz about just waiting for the right centralizers? None, zip, zero, true?”
Guide: “That subject never came up.”
Q: “You still had time between the 16th and the 20th—”
Guide: “Well, we didn’t know if we could find them. That subject never came up.”
Q: “Sir, can you tell us the number of times, that you have personal knowledge of, that BP did not follow the recommendations of Halliburton in connection with the cementing of any of its jobs, if any?
Guide: “I don’t know of any.”
Well, perhaps we know of one. Halliburton’s Gagliano accepted BP’s decision and, on April 17 and 18, developed the specific procedure for pumping the cement. Gagliano created and sent one final cementing model out to the team on the evening of April 18.
The model would later cause a firestorm for a particular page that no one at BP seems to have looked at. That page said that using only six centralizers would likely cause channeling; it also noted: “Based on analysis of the above outlined well conditions, this well is considered to have a SEVERE gas flow problem.” But with twenty-one centralizers, it added, “this well is considered to have a MINOR gas flow problem.”
This report was attached to an e-mail sent to Guide on April 18, but it went unopened because the casing with just the six centralizers was already down the hole. Although BP had had days to get the centralizers, it was now too late to read the e-mail predicting severe gas-flow problems. Guide later testified: “I never knew it was part of the report.”
The cement job will fail. But a few months later, in September 2010, BP’s own investigation will conclude, “Although the decision not to use twenty-one centralizers increased the possibility of channeling above the main hydrocarbon zones, the decision likely did not contribute to the cement’s failure.”
That’s BP’s executives exonerating themselves, so season it with a grain of salt. But numerous industry analysts think centralizers are not the smoking gun. We’ll get back to that question later, but for now, it’s important to understand the distances involved. The recommended twenty-one centralizers were meant to keep the bottom 900 feet of casing evenly centered in the well. If the workers had had all twenty-one, they would have put fifteen above the span containing the oil and gas, four in the zone that held the oil and gas, and two below that zone.
BP placed the six centralizers so as to straddle and bisect the 175 vertical feet of oil and gas–bearing sands deep in the well, at depths of around 18,000 feet. They placed two centralizers above the oil and gas zone, two in the zone, and two below it.
But even if centralizers won’t be the smoking gun, the e-mail exchanges over the centralizers convey the sense that the BP team isn’t treating this endeavor with the utmost care. When red flags go up, BP’s decision makers seem rushed, rather than thorough.
BP e-mails suggest that its personnel believed that any problem with cement could be remediated with additional cement. And actually, that’s often what’s done; well cement jobs sometimes do fail. The reason why they fail is seldom precisely ascertained. Usually the failure is not catastrophic and the fix is to pump more cement in, then test it again. For this reason, the industry has developed several ways of testing the soundness of cementing jobs.
But detecting problems assumes, of course, that the cementing job will be properly tested.
The crew did their cementing over a five-hour period, starting at 7:30 P.M. on April 19. When they finished, at around 12:30 A.M.,