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
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