New York, July 20: In the final days before the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP continued drilling for oil despite internal reports of a leak on a critical safety device on the rig, a company official testified on Tuesday.
Mr Robert Sepulvado, a BP well site leader, said he reported the problem to senior company officials and assumed it would be relayed to the Minerals Management Service, the federal agency that regulates offshore drilling. The leak was on a control pod connected to the blowout preventer, an emergency mechanism that failed to activate after the April 20 disaster. “I assumed everything was alright, because I reported it to the team leader and he should have reported it to MMS,” Mr Sepulvado said.
He could not explain why the company did not respond to his report.
His testimony came at an investigative hearing in this New Orleans suburb conducted by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the new name of the minerals service.
Investigators also pressed Mr Sepulvado about two audits that found problems with other equipment on the Deepwater Horizon and the well it was drilling, including the blowout preventer, known as a BOP.
“In both of those audits, it indicated that the BOP was well past” its inspection date, said Jason Mathews, a panel member. Asked whether he realised that the manufacturer of the blowout preventer required that the device undergo specific tests every five years, Mr Sepulvado said, “No, I did not.”
The agency’s own regulations seem to suggest that BP should have halted drilling when the leak occurred. The recommendation when the “pod does not function properly” is to “suspend further drilling operation until that station or pod is operable,” the regulations say.