BP seeks access to Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer to run tests

Washington (Platts)--15Mar2011/305 pm EDT/1905 GMT

BP is seeking access to the Deepwater Horizon blowout preventer so it can runs tests the company says the joint investigation has failed to perform.

BP filed a motion in US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans on March 9, asking Judge Carl Barbier to allow the company access to the BOP after the joint investigation being run by the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, is finished with it.

The BOP, a five-story stack of valves, sat atop BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico and failed to suppress a blowout on April 20, 2010. The blowout killed 11 workers from Transocean's Deepwater Horizon rig and triggered a massive oil spill.

The joint investigation, under the supervision of the Department of Justice, has been conducting tests on the BOP at a NASA facility in Michoud, Louisiana. DNV Columbus was hired to conduct the forensic tests and BP, Transocean, and Cameron, which made the BOP, have been observing.

The test results are supposed to be delivered to the joint investigation by March 20. Hearings on the BOP are scheduled for the week of April 4.

In its motion, BP said it submitted to the JIT a list of highly technical tests it felt should be conducted, but that the final list of approved tests did not include several of the items BP and other companies had requested.

"BP, however, believes that performance of these forensic activities will add value to an analysis of why the BOP did not work as intended on April 20, and recommends they be completed," the company said in its court brief.

--Gary Gentile, gary_gentile@platts.com

To subscribe or visit go to:  http://www.platts.com

 The McGraw-Hill Companies