BP - off the hook ? ...and a BUY ?

sabretoothtigger

I hope they switch over to a new safer well head design . Its more expensive to use I think but i got shares in the company just in case

The main thing here seems to be they dont think the bp oil well design was bad. It was various decisions along the way and badly checked tests, doesnt that make bp still liable

joeypesci

Are they also saying the crew on the rig were also responsible for failing to see the gases building up?

worldtraveller

A cement mixture intended to temporarily seal BP's Madcondo exploration well repeatedly failed lab tests before the April 20 blowout, a presidential commission investigating the oil spill said Thursday.

As early as February, oil-field service giant Halliburton was getting poor results in lab tests of the recipe for the cement it was planning to use, according to evidence collected by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.

Three separate tests suggested that the mixture would be "unstable," according to a commission staff letter released Thursday. Halliburton notified BP by e-mail about only one of the tests before the well explosion, according to the commission. The two companies went ahead with the cementing job anyway. Its failure became the first in a cascade of factors leading to the accident.

The results of a fourth Halliburton test - the only one indicating that the cement slurry might have been able to contain the high-pressure pool of oil and gas at the bottom of the Macondo well - were not available until the night of April 19 at the earliest and perhaps not until after the cement was poured, the commission staff said.

The oil spill commission is sifting through the events leading to the April 20 explosion, which killed 11 workers, sank the Deepwater Horizon and triggered a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The cement at the bottom of the exploratory well was supposed to have provided a seal until a production facility could be built.

The reason for the cement job's failure has been a matter of dispute for months. Halliburton has pointed at BP; BP has challenged Halliburton. Experts still differ.

Halliburton late Thursday night issued a statement disputing the commission staff's letter, calling the February tests "preliminary" and saying that "final well conditions were not known at that time." The company asserted that it informed BP about the later tests. It called one of those "irrelevant" and said that some adjustments were made after the final test.

The news spooked shareholders; Halliburton's stock closed at $31.68 a share, down nearly 8 percent. BP said it had no comment.

The commission letter reiterated that the cement was just one contributor to the disaster. "Cementing wells is a complex endeavor, and industry experts inform us that cementing failures are not uncommon even in the best of circumstances," the commission letter says.

But the new details call into question whether Halliburton's recipe - which mixed nitrogen and other additives with ordinary cement to create a foamy mixture - was the right one.

The Washington Post

jamesd

Quoting from the letter:

"We believe that its personnel conducted the first of these two tests on or about April 13, seven days before the blowout. Lab personnel used slightly different lab protocols than they had used in February. Although there are some indications that lab personnel may have conducted this test improperly, it once again indicated that the foam slurry design was unstable.
...
It appears that Halliburton personnel began a second April foam stability test shortly after receiving the unfavorable results from the first April test. Halliburton personnel again modified the testing procedure, and this time – for the first time – the data indicated the foam slurry design would be stable.
...
(1) Only one of the four tests discussed above that Halliburton ran on the various slurry designs for the final cement job at the Macondo well indicated that the slurry design would be stable;
(2) Halliburton may not have had—and BP did not have—the results of that test before the evening of April 19, meaning that the cement job may have been pumped without any lab results indicating that the foam cement slurry would be stable;
(3) 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
...
Because it may be anticipated that a particular cement job may be faulty, the oil industry has developed tests, such as the negative pressure test and cement evaluation logs, to identify cementing failures. It has also developed methods to remedy deficient cement jobs.

BP and/or Transocean personnel misinterpreted or chose not to conduct such tests at the Macondo well."

What strikes me there is a change in testing procedure, as distinct from cement mixture, that produced the only positive test result.

worldtraveller

Shares in BP gained on Friday, with traders citing talk that Exxon Mobil was considering a bid for the oil company.

By 1429 GMT, BP shares were up 1.1 percent at 450 pence, having hit an intraday high of 451.35 pence on the rumour.

BP declined to comment and a spokesman for Exxon said in an email that it was "not our practice to comment on market speculation, rumors or media reports".

Reuters

Masomnia

The whole company?!

Thrugelmir

Masomnia wrote: »

The whole company?!

Not the Company it was......... :think:

Masomnia

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Not the Company it was......... :think:

Still £80odd billion's worth!

sabretoothtigger

Very unlikely rumour, the price tag is not likely what it'd cost to buy. XOM has been moving into gas not oil. You can already see the takeover moves, its bp selling off assets to various companies so its all very open. Some of their best assets went to TNK BP which is I think a third owned by bp as we know it

I thought this story started off funny, who knew a company had a probation officer

UPDATE:Judge Orders BP Hearing On Petition To Revoke Probation
(Updates with comments from BP spokesman and additional details)

By Cassandra Sweet

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--A federal judge in Alaska on Thursday ordered BP PLC (BP, BP.LN) to appear in court next month in connection with a petition by BP's federal probation officer to revoke the company's criminal probation.

In a petition filed Wednesday with the court, federal probation officer Mary Frances Barnes accused BP of criminal negligence and violating a condition of the company's probation in its conduct prior to an oil spill on the North Slope in November 2009. She said BP should be subject to additional penalties because the company continued negligent behavior even after pleading guilty over its 2006 Prudhoe Bay pipeline spill.

U.S. Judge John D. Roberts ordered BP to appear in U.S. court in Anchorage on Dec. 20 at 9:30 a.m. local time (1830 GMT) in connection with the petition.

BP's period of probation was set to end at the end of this month, but it is likely to be continued until the petition is resolved.

The order comes as BP faces continued scrutiny over its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, which led to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. A report released Wednesday by a National Academy of Engineering panel suggested that cost concerns may have outweighed safety considerations in decisions BP made prior to the explosion.

The London-based oil giant has been on probation for its role in a 2006 Alaska oil spill since November 2007, when the company pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor violation of the Clean Water Act. A federal court ordered BP to pay a $12 million fine and $12 million in other fees, and placed the company on a three-year probation. The decision stemmed from two 2006 oil spills of more than 200,000 gallons of oil caused by corroded pipes. An August 2006 spill led to a partial shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, the largest in the U.S., which BP operates for itself and other producers. The shutdown led to a brief spike in U.S. oil futures prices.

Federal and state investigators launched a probe in December 2009 after a BP pipeline burst at the Lisburne oil field on the North Slope, spewing 45,828 gallons of crude oil and produced water onto snow-covered tundra near Prudhoe Bay, according to state and federal authorities. The pipeline rupture and spill violated the Clean Water Act and the terms of BP's plea agreement, Barnes said.

The pipeline had no instrumentation to directly monitor or control the flow conditions within the pipeline, although the pipe had a temperature sensor mounted on the surface, Barnes wrote in her petition. Starting in June 2009, warning alarms showed low temperatures for the pipeline but BP operators failed to respond to the alarms and did not investigate or try to resolve the cause of the alarms, Barnes said. She added that the alarm for the pipeline's temperature sensor was set to "low priority status" indicating to workers that a response to the alarm wasn't required.

Barnes suggested that the inaction allowed an "ice plug or hydrate blockage" to form in the pipeline on or about Nov. 14, 2009 and that BP could have prevented the ice plug from forming if it had responded to the low-temperature alarms that went off during the warmer summer months.

In 2001, BP experienced a similar rupture, after which the company recommended that it should relocate surface-mounted temperature sensors and reset flow-line alarm priorities to "critical," however, the company "failed to implement these preventative measures," Barnes said.

BP Alaska spokesman Steve Rinehart said that the company was preparing a response to the petition. He said in an email that BP has cleaned up the site of the November 2009 spill and "made measurable improvements in safety and reliability."

In March 2009, the Justice Department filed a civil lawsuit against BP for breaking federal laws during the 2006 oil spills. The government accused BP of failing to take measures to prevent pipeline spills and asked the court to order BP to pay the maximum amount allowed for civil penalties and to take action to prevent future spills.

BP "has worked with the Department of Justice to try to resolve certain legal issues remaining from North Slope oil spills at Prudhoe Bay in 2006, and Lisburne in 2009," Rinehart wrote in the email. "Unfortunately, that has not yet been successful."

-By Cassandra Sweet, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-269-4446; cassandra.sweet@dowjones.com

November 19, 2010 01:30 ET (06:30 GMT)

StevieJ

Just watching on Newsnight, it appears while the environmentalists are protesting at the BP shareholders meeting, the fishermen in the Gulf are saying that fish stocks have not been this good for years