"Thunder Horse adds to BP woes"

[Strelnikov_]

BP has warned staff against creating electronic documents on unpublicized problems with a key component of the much-delayed Thunder Horse, the world’s largest floating oil production platform, as continued troubles with its US operations plague the UK company.

In a confidential e-mail to staff on the platform in the Gulf of Mexico, Stan Bond, project general manager, said: “Don’t create a document (including e-mails or BlackBerry messages) if a telephone call or meeting will suffice.’’

He said that when creating draft reports or presentations on the issue of the tree coupler – which an employee described as a control system part crucial to run the platform – the first and last drafts should be sent to BP’s legal department for a “quick review”.

Mr Bond added: “Whenever possible, avoid written communication on this issue outside of BP and its direct contractor personnel.”
Ronnie Chappell, a BP spokesman, said Mr Bond’s e-mail, seen by the Financial Times, was “standard internal communication business advice”. Yet a BP employee insisted the advice was “highly unusual – never-seen-before kind of stuff”.

http://www.peakoil.com/article35674.html


Looks like Thunderhorse has passed C2 and is well on the way to C3.

[TheWraith]

1. Boy, that sounds a lot like conspiracy to commit fraud.

If they're deliberately avoiding creating recorded documents, then they're avoiding putting down information that a criminal or civil probe could uncover.