Deepwater Horizon - Transocean Oil Rig Fire

[Infomania]

USDOJ: Former BP Engineer Arrested for Obstruction of Justice in Connection with the Deepwater Horizon Criminal Investigation

(Link to official DOJ press release)
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2012/April/12-ag-524.html

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[Infomania]

Former BP Engineer arrested in Gulf oil spill case - Yahoo! Finance

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-bp-...221714861.html

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Federal prosecutors brought the first criminal charges Tuesday in the Gulf oil spill, accusing a former BP engineer of deleting more than 300 text messages that indicated the blown-out well was spewing far more crude than the company was telling the public at the time.
Two years and four days after the drilling-rig explosion that set off the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history, Kurt Mix, 50, of Katy, Texas, was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence.

>>>>His attorney, Joan McPhee, issued a statement Tuesday evening describing the charges as misguided and that she is confident Mix will be exonerated. "The government says he intentionally deleted text messages from his phone, but the content of those messages still resides in thousands of emails, text messages and other documents that he saved," she said. "Indeed, the emails that Kurt preserved include the very ones highlighted by the government."<<<<<

The U.S. Justice Department made it clear that the investigation is still going on and suggested that more people could be arrested. In a statement, Attorney General Eric Holder said prosecutors "will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history."

Federal investigators have been looking into the causes of the blowout and the actions of managers, engineers and rig workers at BP and its subcontractors Halliburton and Transocean in the days and hours before the April 20, 2010, explosion.

>>>>But the case against Mix focuses only on the aftermath of the blast, when BP scrambled for weeks to plug the leak. Even then, the charges are not really about the disaster itself, but about an alleged attempt to thwart the investigation into it.<<<<

In court papers, the FBI said one of the areas under investigation is whether the oil company intentionally lowballed the amount of crude spewing from the well. In outlining the charges, the government suggested Mix knew the rate of flow from the busted well was much greater than the company publicly acknowledged.

Prosecutors also said BP gave the public an optimistic account of its May 2010 efforts to plug the well via a technique called a "top kill," even though the company's internal data and some of the text messages showed the operation was likely to fail.

An accurate flow-rate estimate is necessary to determine how much in penalties BP and its subcontractors could face under the Clean Water Act. In court papers, prosecutors appeared to suggest the company was also worried about the effect of the disaster on its stock price.

The charges came a day before a federal judge was to consider granting preliminary approval of a $7.8 billion civil settlement between BP and a committee of plaintiffs.

In a statement, BP said it is cooperating with the Justice Department and added: "BP had clear policies requiring preservation of evidence in this case and has undertaken substantial and ongoing efforts to preserve evidence."
The FBI said in court papers that Mix had been repeatedly notified by BP that instant messages and text messages needed to be preserved.

Mix, who resigned from BP in January, appeared on Tuesday afternoon before a judge in Houston, shackled at his hands and feet, and was released on $100,000 bail. His attorney had no comment afterward. If convicted, Mix could get up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count.
The engineer deleted more than 200 messages sent to a BP supervisor from his iPhone containing information about how much oil was spilling out, then erased 100 more messages to a contractor the following year, prosecutors said. Some of the messages were later recovered via forensic computer techniques.

Many of the messages had to do with an effort to plug up the well with heavy mud injected under high pressure. In public statements, the company professed optimism that the top kill would work, giving it a 60 to 70 percent chance of success.

On the day the top kill began, Mix estimated in a text to his supervisor that more than 15,000 barrels of oil per day were spilling &mdash; three times BP's public estimate of 5,000 barrels and an amount much greater than what BP said the top kill could probably handle.

At the end of the first day, Mix texted his supervisor: "Too much flow rate &mdash; over 15,000 and too large an orifice." Despite Mix's findings, BP continued to make public statements that the top kill was proceeding according to plan, prosecutors said. On May 29, the top kill was halted and BP announced its failure.

The company's stock dropped 15 percent on the next trading day, the government said. David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor who was chief of the Justice Department's environmental crimes section, said the charges are probably "just the first of what will be multiple criminal charges."
"It could be the sign that the government believes there was a more far-reaching cover-up about the size of the spill," he said.

BP stock closed at $41.91 Tuesday, a drop of just 4 cents. Analysts said investors evidently recognized the charges involved just one, low-ranking employee and saw no hint yet of any kind of larger cover-up on BP's part.
The explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers. More than 200 million gallons of crude oil leaked from the well off the Louisiana coast before it was capped.

Under the Clean Water Act, polluters can be fined $1,100 to $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil, with the higher amount imposed if the government can show the disaster was caused by gross negligence.

Al Sunseri, whose family-owned oyster business was damaged by the spill, said there was little real news in the arrest of Mix. "I personally believe it's so involved that we could never really understand the magnitude of the bad players involved," he said.

Billy Nungesser, president of hard-hit Plaquemines Parish who has long accused BP of misleading the public about the spill, said: "We're just glad that the truth, and all the truth, will come out. Where crimes were committed, BP needs to pay the price."
___
Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Ramit Masti-Plushnick in Houston contributed to this story.
@yahoofinance on Twitter, become a fan on Facebook

[Earl Boebert]

I was wrong when I made the following statement:

Even if the plan called for closed-loop operation with the mud going into the pits, the pit volume sensor was unreliable when the rig was listing (as was the case here, because of crane operation) and crews were known to measure volumes by tying a machine nut to a piece of string and lowering it into the pit.

It wasn't the pit volume sensor that was supposedly affected by the crane operation, it was the flow out rate sensor. I'm attaching the section of the annotated Sperry Sun data from the Chief Counsel's report, which is where the assertion I misremembered came from. The time frame is from 2020 to 2030 hrs. The peak to trough variation is roughly 200 gpm, or about 20% of the indicated value of 1000 gpm or so. That seems like a lot of noise in such an important value. Also, how can a flowmeter be affected by rig attitude? Is there any other explanation?

Finally, the HiTec display which was presumably the crew's primary source used a different flowmeter than the Sperry Sun system.

Cheers,

Earl

[Saigak]

I was wrong when I made the following statement:



It wasn't the pit volume sensor that was supposedly affected by the crane operation, it was the flow out rate sensor. I'm attaching the section of the annotated Sperry Sun data from the Chief Counsel's report, which is where the assertion I misremembered came from. The time frame is from 2020 to 2030 hrs. The peak to trough variation is roughly 200 gpm, or about 20% of the indicated value of 1000 gpm or so. That seems like a lot of noise in such an important value. Also, how can a flowmeter be affected by rig attitude? Is there any other explanation?

Finally, the HiTec display which was presumably the crew's primary source used a different flowmeter than the Sperry Sun system.

Cheers,

Earl

Flow out measurement is usually inaccurate. The most common type of sensors are usually a pressure sensor attached to a "paddle" calibrated against flow in when rates are stable. Variations in flow out can be caused by heave, pitch etc. Flow out is rarely used as an empirical value, more as an indicator of flow. Volume control is more accurate, reliable and useful.

There are better systems than what I described but they are rarely used.

[Earl Boebert]

Flow out measurement is usually inaccurate. The most common type of sensors are usually a pressure sensor attached to a "paddle" calibrated against flow in when rates are stable. Variations in flow out can be caused by heave, pitch etc. Flow out is rarely used as an empirical value, more as an indicator of flow. Volume control is more accurate, reliable and useful.

There are better systems than what I described but they are rarely used.

So the Chief Counsel's report listed four methods for kick detection: flow in/flow out, volume control, gas sensing, and pressure. Flow in/flow out is iffy, volume control was complicated by sending mud overboard, and gas alarms were inhibited because of the number of alarms from this particular well. I guess this explains why both the Marathon and the joint AGR-FJ Brown/GL-Noble Denton analyses focused on pressure.

Cheers,

Earl

[Infomania]

Earl wrote:" I guess this explains why both the Marathon and the joint AGR-FJ Brown/GL-Noble Denton analyses focused on pressure."
<><><><><><><><><>
A Non-perforated cased well that has pressure indication, is subsequently bled off and the pressure returns is in communication with a pressurized formation somewhere.
If you bleed the well off and the pressure returns in short order the odds are the situation can only get worse as any flow will generally unload well fluid reducing the hydrostatic pressure, increasing surface pressure increasing flow unless the well is immediately shut in.

The personnel involved here were more familiar with the drilling aspect of the industry rather than completion operations. They trusted the casing and cement job, apparently unaware that these barriers can and do fail occasionally.

Service crews on the production end see this often. Wells that are shut in and "supposed to be dead" aren't. Generally speaking if you read pressure you have a problem that needs to be addressed regardless of flow indications.

[Earl Boebert]

Earl wrote:" I guess this explains why both the Marathon and the joint AGR-FJ Brown/GL-Noble Denton analyses focused on pressure."
<><><><><><><><><>
A Non-perforated cased well that has pressure indication, is subsequently bled off and the pressure returns is in communication with a pressurized formation somewhere.
If you bleed the well off and the pressure returns in short order the odds are the situation can only get worse as any flow will generally unload well fluid reducing the hydrostatic pressure, increasing surface pressure increasing flow unless the well is immediately shut in.

The personnel involved here were more familiar with the drilling aspect of the industry rather than completion operations. They trusted the casing and cement job, apparently unaware that these barriers can and do fail occasionally.

Service crews on the production end see this often. Wells that are shut in and "supposed to be dead" aren't. Generally speaking if you read pressure you have a problem that needs to be addressed regardless of flow indications.

An interesting and very useful observation, that sheds light on a lot of issues, like the number of things in the temporary abandonment plan and its execution that various observers noted as uncommon (sending mud overboard, 16 ppg spacer, long drill string for weight, negative pressure test in middle of displacement, etc.) BP had no written procedure for temporary abandonment, and TO had no formal course in it -- all OJT. I wonder about the experience and proficiency of all concerned in such an operation.

Cheers,

Earl

[Infomania]

UPDATE: Halliburton Files Protest Against BP Oil Spill Settlement | Fox Business

http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012...ll-settlement/

("UPDATE: Halliburton Files Protest Against BP Oil Spill Settlement," at 12:01 p.m. EDT, misstated the day Halliburton filed its protest in the first paragraph. The same error occurred in a prior version of the story at 11:21 a.m. EDT. The correct version follows
--Halliburton says it had insufficient time to review BP's proposed $7.8 billion settlement
--Oil services company says settlement would allow too many class action litigants
--Action continues legal battle over April 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident

HOUSTON (Dow Jones)--Halliburton Co. (HAL) objects to BP PLC's (BP) proposed $7.8 billion settlement with individual plaintiffs for the oil giant's involvement in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster, according to court documents filed Tuesday.
Halliburton in its filing said it had only "limited amount of time available" to review BP's proposed settlement with thousands of businesses, property owners and individuals along the Gulf of Mexico who sustained economic damage from the 87-day oil spill. The Houston-based company also contends BP's settlement would make Halliburton responsible for paying at least part of the settlement by "improperly assigning claims against (Halliburton) to the plaintiff's steering committee," according to the filing.
Halliburton has said the company wasn't at fault in the accident. A BP representative declined to comment.
"The plantiffs' steering committee and BP have had more than a year to structure the proposed settlements, using a veritable army of experts and attorneys," Halliburton's lawyers wrote in the filing. "In contrast, (Halliburton) has had less than one week to review and analyze the proposed settlements."
Halliburton's protest, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, is the latest twist in the legal wrangling surrounding the companies since the April 2010 rig explosion and fire in the Gulf of Mexico that resulted in 11 deaths and millions of barrels of oil leaking into the water.
The spill stemming from the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon oil well was the worst in the Gulf's history and resulted in thousands of lawsuits against well owner BP; rig operator Transocean Ltd. (RIG), and Halliburton, which provided cementing services for the project.

[Earl Boebert]

Interesting article on the subtleties of human/computer interaction in advanced control systems:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technolog...-to-crash.html

Cheers,

Earl

[Infomania]

Al Armendariz, Obama's EPA Region VI Administrator Wants To Crucify the Oil & Gas Business

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzKfV...e_gdata_player

Al Armendariz resigned his position over the weekend.
Link to comments by local congressmen below:

EPA's Region VI admin. resigned edffective on Monday. He compared his enforcement of environmental laws 2 crucifixion of Turks by conquering Romans

http://t.co/vG2OUs72

[Infomania]

NOLA.com : Deny BP motion to delay start of oil spill trial, Alabama attorney general says

http://mobile.nola.com/advnola/pm_29...tguid=9C4WPBzK

Mark Schleifstein, The Times-Picayune05/01/2012 2:34 PM

BP's motion to delay the start of the civil trial over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill until after final approval of a proposed settlement between BP and private claimants should be denied, and BP should remain a defendant when the trial resumes, Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange argued in a memorandum filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans. "BP should be held publicly accountable in 2012," the memorandum says flatly.

The memo goes on to recommend that the first phase of the trial, which will focus on the events leading up to the accident, should begin on July 16 to allow federal, state and local governments to pursue their claims resulting from the spill.

"The governments deserve our day in court," the motion said. "We represent the interest of all citizens. We hold BP's greatest liability: penalties and damages to the federal, state and local governments."

(article continues)

[Earl Boebert]

Here I am again with another question; Google wasn't my friend on this one :-)

What are the strategic alternatives to temporary abandonment of an exploratory well such as Macondo? Obviously, if it's a dry hole it's plugged and abandoned. What other options are there if oil is found?

I ask this because the BP company man who was on Deepwater Horizon up to four months before the incident testified that in seven years the crew had done at most four "completions." What could he have meant by that?

Cheers,

Earl

[Saigak]

Here I am again with another question; Google wasn't my friend on this one :-)

What are the strategic alternatives to temporary abandonment of an exploratory well such as Macondo? Obviously, if it's a dry hole it's plugged and abandoned. What other options are there if oil is found?

I ask this because the BP company man who was on Deepwater Horizon up to four months before the incident testified that in seven years the crew had done at most four "completions." What could he have meant by that?

Cheers,

Earl

The minimum temporary abandonment (suspended) would be with drilling fluid with a higher hydrostatic pressure than reservoir, two temporary plugs one across the lowest casing shoe and another higher up and a wellhead at seabed.

A full temporary abandonment would have completion/production string with completion fluid, mechanical plugs and a xmas tree at the seabed. In this case the well is ready to produce. If the production/completion string is complex, completion engineers come aboard to assist.

What BP were attempting was fairly close to the former. What you quoted is largely irrelevant as Deepwater Horizon was not running a completion. The abandonment they were attempting was not technically difficult and with normal drilling practice should have succeeded.

[alcor]

Here I am again with another question; Google wasn't my friend on this one :-)

What are the strategic alternatives to temporary abandonment of an exploratory well such as Macondo? Obviously, if it's a dry hole it's plugged and abandoned. What other options are there if oil is found?

I ask this because the BP company man who was on Deepwater Horizon up to four months before the incident testified that in seven years the crew had done at most four "completions." What could he have meant by that?

Cheers,

Earl

Earl,
The question you should be asking is what are the Gov't defined requirements for temporary abandonment? Or perhaps, what is the lack of Gov't directive on this issue?
No doubt about it, we can examine whether BP have failed in this temporary abandonment, but they only get to operate when they satisfy the demands of guidance documents.

[Earl Boebert]

Earl,
The question you should be asking is what are the Gov't defined requirements for temporary abandonment? Or perhaps, what is the lack of Gov't directive on this issue?
No doubt about it, we can examine whether BP have failed in this temporary abandonment, but they only get to operate when they satisfy the demands of guidance documents.

That's an interesting point, but not what I was after. I can't give a short answer why, so I'll do you the courtesy of a long one, but I must warn you that I will be waxing philosophic along the way :-)

There are (at least) two mental models one can construct of a complex failure like this one. One is the linear model. This is the one that describes the situation as a string of components or the "slices of swiss cheese" picture where everything is fine until the holes line up. Lawyers love this model. It's simpleminded enough that a lay jury can be convinced (or conned) into thinking they understand it. More importantly it enables an advocate to point to one element or "slice" in the picture and say "if they hadn't done X, none of this would have happened." "They," of course, being the people on the other side. So we have BP saying TO shouldn't have done this and TO saying Halliburton shouldn't have done that and NOV (the people that made the primary monitoring and control system) doing a brilliant job of stonewalling the inquiry and staying off everybody's radar. It's a model made to order for the blame game.

The second model is the systems model. This model takes the systems engineering approach that interfaces and interactions between components are as, if not more, important than the insides of the components, be they technical or human. The systems model views a failure not as a linear string or stack of slices but a mesh, or network of components. Each component, whether it's a widget or a human taking an action or making a decision, looks perfectly reasonable when examined out of context. But when you put them together, by chance or design, bad things happen. The systems model gives you insight into gaps and mismatches and helps you direct effort at improvement. And by "improvement" I don't mean that you are asserting that X interacting with Y caused or even contributed to this incident, I just mean that you find things that would benefit by more advanced technology or better procedures.

The logical question is, so what? Why can't we just chug along the way we have in the past? Well, I think there are two things going on that make it imperative to think hard about improving how offshore drilling can be done.

The first of these is suggested by the quote from John Konrad that Infomania posted about the lack of experience in certain quarters. It's clear to me that offshore drilling runs on tacit knowledge gained by apprenticeship, with minimal technical support. If the DWH drill shack was an airplane it would be a DC3. Wonderfully safe aircraft, as long as you have a very experienced crew and stay within the flight envelope. But I don't think we are going to have the luxury of either.

Two things are operating to increase the overall risk in offshore drilling. One is having experienced people "age out" faster than new people come up to the same competence level. The other is the movement to deeper wells in deeper water, which at least one paper (URL below) plausibly argues that in doing so the kicks are going to come increasingly often and with increasing force.

In a way the situation is reminiscent of that which occurred in commercial aviation in the late 1960s, when the pilots with military experience were retiring and the aircraft were getting bigger and faster. The industry evolved in the way that I think it is likely that offshore drilling will evolve: more formality and more automated support for operators. I won't live to see it, but I wouldn't be surprised if my grandson lived in a world where "drill by wire" was as commonplace as "fly by wire" is today. Given the consequences of failure, it is incumbent upon everyone involved to get it right, and in my experience the first step in getting it right is using the systems model to get your head around what happened. And in the automation domain, if the NOV HiTec system is an example of the current state of practice, there is (to be charitable) a very large room for improvement.

Whew. That took longer than I thought it would. So, to get back to the topic at hand, what I was interested in was where the overall temporary abandonment process attempted by the DWH crew sat in the spectrum of such activities, so I could get an idea of how much stress and uncertainty they faced and how that, in turn related to the other aspects of the process.

Cheers,

Earl

URL: http://bit.ly/J524Ms (Shortened for convenience).

[Infomania]

UPDATE: BP Deepwater Horizon Spill Trial Moved To 2013 - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-...04-704624.html

LONDON (Dow Jones)--A trial to apportion blame and damages for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster will now start in 2013 after the New Orleans judge hearing the case scheduled a new start date.

The delay is a boost for BP PLC (BP), which is facing billions of dollars in fines from the U.S. government for its part in the incident. Federal and state authorities had pressed for a summer trial, arguing that damages payments from the responsible parties was needed to speed up Gulf Coast restoration efforts.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Thursday scheduled a trial for Jan. 14, 2013, more than 10 months after its original date.

[ryanwood86]

Yeah, one of our boats working for BP is heading out there to pump water on it.

Oh you don't say? Tell me how it goes lol

[Infomania]

With This 500-Ton Deepwater Well Cap, BP Is Ready For The Next Oil Spill -Forbes


http://www.forbes.com/sites/christop...ater-well-cap/

System can be broken down and shipped around the world on 7- 747 aircraft.

The system cost $50 million to develop and was manufactured by BP and Cameron International. That&rsquo;s a cheap insurance policy considering BP&rsquo;s stated plans to keep investing more than $4 billion a year into the Gulf of Mexico. Though the company is divesting non-core Gulf fields, it still operates some of the deepest and largest, like Atlantis, Thunder Horse, Mad Dog and Tiber. BP currently has five rigs operating in the Gulf, with three more on the way, set to drill wells in the Kaskida, Moccasin, Freedom and Na Kika fields.

As BP goes ever deeper and farther out, however, it will need an even bigger, tougher capping stack. This one can be effective on well pressures as high as 15,000 psi. BP&rsquo;s big goal, as highlighted at last weeks Offshore Technology Conference, is to make it routine to operate with pressures of 20,000 psi. &ldquo;BP has never been more committed to deepwater,&rdquo; says Morrison.

[Infomania]

Risk management upgrades needed to improve safety offshore - Offshore

http://www.offshore-mag.com/articles...-offshore.html

The following is a general discussion and not based on any specific information from the Deepwater Horizon accident. The experiences referred to are from a range of companies, including operators and suppliers to the offshore industry.
In brief terms, the purpose of risk management is to take the right actions to handle the right risks. Is the industry aware of all the safety risks involved in offshore fields? In broad terms, yes of course. All operator organizations have in-depth, detailed knowledge about risks, and make great efforts to ensure the risk picture is kept up-to-date.
However, there is still room for improvement, particularly in two areas. The first is where the extrapolation of the design and/or operational practices causes new risks. These typically occur when engineers alter the dimensions of their designs to a level where physical behavior changes drastically. For example, heavier BOPs have caused unforeseen wellhead fatigue problems due to a different dynamic behavior of the floating rig/riser/BOP/wellhead combination. The second problem area is due to the challenges of risk management during changes. Examples include during complex operations such as the drilling and completion of a well where safety barriers change during the operations, human interaction with systems, or changing risks due to wear and tear. A major contributor to several large accidents has been ongoing repairs or unrepaired system failures, such as systems that were temporarily outside their intended design conditions.

(article continues)

[Infomania]

NOLA.com : BP oil rig leader sought onshore advice on troubling test results, testimony reveals

http://mobile.nola.com/advnola/pm_29...tguid=kQSbKXDG

David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
05/04/2012 9:00 AM

At 8:52 p.m. on April 20, 2010, exactly 57 minutes before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, the top BPman onboard called an engineer in Houston to say he didn't understand the results of a test that would tell them whether the well had been properly sealed. What Donald Vidrine said he was seeing should have caused him to shut the project down, an expert witness for the government has testified in a court deposition. Mark Hafle, the engineer in Houston, told Vidrine something wasn't right. But instead of stopping operations or investigating further, Vidrine concluded -- apparently by the end of the phone call -- that it was safe enough to remove the well's drilling mud, the last barrier against a blowout.

Hafle's recollections, taken down by BP investigators, and the assessment of the expert witness, who is the former director of drilling research at the University of Tulsa, are contained in court-sealed filings obtained this week by The Times-Picayune. They shed new light on critical decisions by Vidrine, who has refused to testify, citing medical issues. The documents reveal a tragic misstep and lingering uncertainty from the top rig man in the very same minute that gas was first detected in the well.

And as Vidrine appeals a court order for his medical records to be examined by an appointed doctor, the evidence about his words and deeds could be a central part of the federal government's effort to prove that negligence caused the spill. Vidrine's criminal defense attorney, Bob Habans, said he couldn't comment on pending litigation. He also declined to comment about what ails his client.

Eleven rig workers were killed in the accident. When the rig sank, the well spewed more than 4 million barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico for nearly three months. The government is pursuing billions of dollars in pollution fines through civil litigation; separately, the Justice Department is also conducting a criminal investigation that could yield manslaughter charges.

Whether Vidrine's decisions as the night-side well site leader, or those of the day-side well site leader Robert Kaluza, rise to a criminal level is yet to be seen. BP's own internal investigation long ago concluded that Vidrine and Kaluza misinterpreted the tests they ran the afternoon of April 20, and that they explained away strange results when they should have recognized the dangers they portended. But to this point, the evidence suggested the officials, spurred on by specious explanations by Transocean drillers for why pressure readings would appear haywire, never realized they were making the wrong call.

An investigative report by BP's Mark Bly stated that there was "no evidence that the rig crew or well site leaders consulted anyone outside their team about the pressure abnormality." But the sealed court documents are the first to show that Vidrine actually asked for help late in the process and apparently ignored warnings from Hafle, the engineer who designed the well.

When Vidrine started his shift at 6 p.m. that day, the crew had just used the blowout preventer, a stack of valves and pipes a mile under the sea, to close off well openings and test the pressure in the hole below, to make sure the cement linings they had poured had properly sealed the well's walls. A successful test would show no pressure on the drill pipe running down into the well and no pressure or fluid flowing into a line on the blowout preventer. Instead, the crew found huge pressure on the drill pipe and none on the other tube, called the "kill line."

Vidrine asked them to run the test again. After a few adjustments, the same odd readings reappeared. Then he called Hafle and talked with him for 10 minutes.

"Mark said he told Don that you can't have pressure on the drill pipe and zero pressure on the kill line in a test that's properly lined up," said the BP notes of an interview with Hafle on July 8, 2010. "Mark said that he told Don he might consider whether he had trapped pressure in the line or perhaps he didn't have a valve properly lined up. Don told Mark that he was fully satisfied that the rig crew had performed a successful (pressure) test."

Vidrine and Kaluza have refused to testify, but according to Bly's report, they were convinced by Transocean's toolpusher and driller that pressure on a rubber valve in the blowout preventer was probably causing false pressure readings on the drill pipe, a phenomenon they called the "bladder effect." BP and several experts have subsequently said the bladder effect is a myth.

The expert witness for the government -- petroleum engineer J.J. Azar, the retired director of drilling research at Tulsa -- was questioned by Justice Department attorneys in December 2011. He testified that even his college students should know that the pressure test can't be successful if there's any pressure on the drill pipe. He added there was only one proper course of action for anyone after seeing the test results they got on the Deepwater Horizon. "If I was right there on that rig site, whether I was a driller, well site leader, (offshore installation manager), toolpusher, senior toolpusher, and seen that anomaly, I shut the well down, sir," Azar said.

When Vidrine and Hafle hung up, there were still 36 minutes before natural gas and oil would push their way from the bottom of the well to above the blowout preventer's shutoff valves, 47 minutes to go before the first explosion. Once the oil and gas rise above the valves, closing the well in is tough. But if they're below that, the well can be closed rather quickly, Azar said. In questioning Azar, Justice Department lawyer Mike Underhill suggested that if Vidrine had done what he was supposed to at that point, there would have been plenty of time to get the well back under control. Azar responded that he couldn't know what Vidrine did after the Hafle phone call. And he pointed out that the drilling crew also could have stopped the project.

Transocean's engineer in charge of the blowout preventer, Christopher Pleasant, testified in 2010 that he agreed with Vidrine that the second test was successful. Azar also testified that the Transocean drilling crew missed a final chance to close in the well when they noticed the problems about seven minutes before the oil and gas got above the shutoff valves. Justice Department spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle declined to comment on the Azar deposition or the implications of Vidrine's phone call to Hafle.