BP Joined In Investigation Of Itself, Contractor

[DeSwiss]

Source: Anchorage Daily News

BP Joined In Investigation Of Itself, Contractor
BLOWOUT PREVENTERS: Rig workers had reported cheating.

Anchorage Daily News
By RICHARD MAUER
Published: June 27th, 2010 10:27 PM

When two state agencies received complaints in 2005 that a BP drilling contractor routinely cheated on tests of blowout preventers and BP knew it, the agencies let the very companies accused of wrongdoing join the investigation. Records show that attorneys and officials of BP and its contractor, Nabors Alaska, sat in with, or even in place of, state investigators when they interviewed witnesses, including Nabors rig workers and the BP company men who oversaw their work.

At times, company representatives led the questioning. In at least three instances, after witnesses confirmed allegations, company lawyers took them aside for private conversations away from state investigators. One Nabors employee, immediately after emerging from his private meeting with the Nabors attorney, recanted his statement, state records show.

Despite assertions by at least seven Nabors employees that they witnessed cheating in the recent past leading up to the investigation, the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission ultimately ruled there was no widespread pattern of wrongdoing and declined to levy penalties. But how independent was the investigation leading up to that conclusion? In reports and e-mails written at the time, BP representatives referred to the inquiry as a "joint investigation" by the "team" of BP, Nabors, the commission and the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation.

In recent interviews, Commissioner John Norman and investigator Jim Regg of the state conservation commission said BP was wrong, and that the agency never agreed to characterize it as a joint investigation. But Norman and Regg could point to no document in the five volumes of their investigative file where a state official objected to BP's use of the term.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/06/26/1342800/bp-helped-state-investigate-itself.html

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- Cheating on blowout preventer tests? Leading in the subsequent state investigation and in the questioning of witnesses who complained about this cheating? And then taking those witnesses aside later to "talk to them" only to have them recant their testimony? Back in 2005, you say???

What could go wrong? I mean it's not as if one of these blowout preventers ever failed, right? Right???
==============================================================================
DeSwiss


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"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me eight times, I must be a f**king
idiot." ~ Jon Stewart, on the last eight presidents vowing to end America's addiction to foreign oil

[mbperrin]

1. Yes, that is how the oil business works. Intimidation, fear, injury.

The old "joke" is that if you fall off the rig, you're fired before you hit the ground, so no claim.

It's not a joke, just the way these bastards do business.

[chrstianmaldor]

2. Lol

That's all I have to say: LOL. The fox guarding the henhouse.

[Hubert Flottz]

3. Reminds me of how AT Massey works around here.

[Robbien]

4. In the same way three universities are supposed to investigate Deepwater Horizon

of course BP is funding that investigation to the tune of $50 mil.

What do you suppose the odds are that they will find BP did nothing criminally wrong.