IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser.

Worker: Alarm on doomed rig not fully turned on

NYT: A technician from the Deepwater Horizon told a government panel Friday that the rig's emergency alarm was regularly set to "inhibited," including on the day of the fire and explosion, so that false alarms wouldn't wake sleeping crew members.
Image: Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon
The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig was not fully activated on the day the rig caught fire and exploded, a rig worker told a government panel Friday.  Fire boats are seen here battling the blaze April 21.USCG
/ Source: The New York Times

The emergency alarm on the Deepwater Horizon was not fully activated on the day the oil rig caught fire and exploded, triggering the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a rig worker on Friday told a government panel investigating the accident.

The worker, Mike Williams, chief electronics technician aboard the Transocean rig, said the general safety alarm was habitually set to "inhibited" to avoid waking up the crew with late-night sirens.

"They did not want people woke up at 3 a.m. from false alarms," Mr. Williams told the federal panel of investigators in this New Orleans suburb. Consequently, the alarm did not sound during the emergency, leaving workers to relay information through the loudspeaker system. While it is not known whether the alarm alone would have saved the crew members who died in the disaster, the lack of a fully functioning alarm hampered the effort to safely evacuate the rig, Mr. Williams said.

In a statement, Transocean said rig workers were allowed to change the settings on the general alarm to prevent it "from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issues or a non-emergency."

"It was not a safety oversight or done as a matter of convenience," the company said. Transocean also pointed to a company document dated April 1 to April 14, in which inspectors testing the fire detection system found "no detectors inhibited."

A six-member panel is investigating the April 20 disaster that killed 11 people and unleashed the largest oil spill in United States history. At hearings this week, crew members have described repeated failures in the weeks before the disaster, including power losses, computer crashes and leaking emergency equipment.

In a statement, Transocean said rig workers were allowed to change the settings on the general alarm to prevent it "from sounding unnecessarily when one of the hundreds of local alarms activates for what could be a minor issues or a non-emergency."

"It was not a safety oversight or done as a matter of convenience," the company said. Transocean also pointed to a company document dated April 1 to April 14, in which inspectors testing the fire detection system found "no detectors inhibited."

The rig's history of mechanical errors was documented in a confidential audit conducted by BP six months before the explosion and reviewed by The New York Times. According to the September 2009 document, four BP officials reported that Transocean, the rig's owner, had left 390 repairs undone, including many that were "high priority" and would require a total of more than 3,500 hours of labor. It is unclear how many of the problems remained by the day of the catastrophe.

The 60-page audit found that previously reported errors had been ignored by Transocean. "Consequently, a number of the recommendations that Transocean had indicated as closed out had either deteriorated again or not been suitably addressed in the first place," investigators wrote.

In a statement, BP said it expected Transocean to take the audit seriously. "The goal is to have the contractor address all safety critical items in a prompt manner," the statement said. "As we have previously said, the Deepwater Horizon tragedy had multiple potential causes, including equipment failure."

During Friday's hearing, witnesses spoke to the role that human shortcuts played in compounding the rig's troubles.

Mr. Williams, who filed a lawsuit against Transocean in federal court in New Orleans on April 29, added several new details about the equipment on the vessel, testifying that another Transocean official turned a critical system for removing dangerous gas from the drilling shack to "bypass mode." When Mr. Williams questioned that decision, he said he was reprimanded.

"No, the damn thing's been in bypass for five years," he recalled being told by Mark Hay, the subsea supervisor. "Why'd you even mess with it?"

He recalled that Mr. Hay added: "The entire fleet runs them in 'bypass.'"

Problems existed from the beginning of drilling the well, Mr. Williams said. For months, the computer system had been locking up, producing what the crew deemed the "blue screen of death."

"It would just turn blue," he said. "You'd have no data coming through."

Replacement hardware had been ordered but not yet installed by the time of the disaster, Mr. Williams said.

Later during the hearing, an engineering expert told investigators that the crew members had incorrectly performed a critical test of emergency equipment and did not detect a dangerous kick of gas only an hour before the explosion.

John R. Smith, a petroleum engineering professor at Louisiana State University, told investigators that rig data showed crew members had actually failed to correctly test the blowout preventer, which should have closed the oil well.

"The reality is it's not a test at all, in my opinion," Mr. Smith testified, after reviewing records of the crew's actions. For months, survivors and Transocean officials have maintained that the blowout preventer was properly tested.

In the final weeks of drilling, rig supervisors were under intense financial pressure to complete the ill-fated well, several witness have testified. BP was 43 days behind schedule when the rig exploded, costing the company about $1 million a day in rig rental rates, company officials say.

The confidential BP audit has been referred to by lawyers and investigators, but not detailed publicly. The inspection, conducted by four BP officials from Sept. 13 to Sept. 17, paints a grim picture of Transocean's upkeep of the rig, which BP was leasing.

Of BP's previous safety orders to Transocean, the audit states, some "findings were simply rejected, with no formal risk mitigation demonstrated."

"While it is appreciated that a good number of findings had been addressed by hard work and effort, there were too many that had not," it states.

Unsafe working conditions include a work area covered in a "thick film of drilling mud," supposedly watertight equipment that actually leaked and safety equipment that was passed its inspection date. The recording of maintenance issues was "substandard with missing information and poor quality reports that lacked sufficient detail to convince the reader that the task had actually been performed in accordance with the procedure."

The findings reinforced those in two separate audits, obtained by The Times, that were performed in March and April by Lloyd's Register Group, a maritime and risk-management organization. In an audit conducted from April 1 to 12, investigators identified 26 components and systems on the rig that were in "bad" or "poor" condition. A month earlier, an audit on the "safety culture" on the rig by a separate division of Lloyd's showed that workers were dismayed about safety practices and feared reprisals if they reported mistakes.

This story, "Oil Rig Alarm Was Not Fully Turned On, Worker Says," first appeared in The New York Times.