Thats sad. At least saving money is an understandable excuse for using non-conforming cement. What was the reason for not addressing the failure of the cement
quote:
William Reilly — the co-chairman of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offhsore Drilling — spoke a day after a marathon panel hearing delved into what caused the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig.
“Whatever else we learned and saw yesterday, it was emphatically not a culture of safety on that rig,” Reilly said Tuesday at the outset of the second day of the panel’s two-day hearing.
He said the commission probe has revealed a “ghastly” story of “one bad call after another,” including the decision to proceed after failed cement tests, well pressure tests that were mistakenly judged a success and others. Experts questioned BP's use of a single plug in the process. Charlie Williams, a chief scientist with Shell Energy Resources, said his company used a minimum of three plugs in its deepwater wells.
Reilly described the narrative, developed by Bartlit in a courtroom style that drew on sophisticated graphics and questioning of executives from the three companies, as "ghastly".
Bartlit said he found no concrete evidence that any of those mistakes were motivated by cost – a conclusion that drew angry criticism from Democrats in Congress. But he also noted that time and money were always factors because of the huge costs associated with offshore drilling. "Any time you are talking about $1.5m [£935,000] a day, money enters into it."
Panel members also said that BP was hurried and made confusing, last-minute changes to plans that were unusual in the complex environment of deep-water drilling. They said BP could have operated more safely if it had taken the time to get the necessary equipment and materials.
"We are aware of what appeared to be a rush to completion," Reilly said. What is unclear, he added, was what drove people to determine that they could not wait for equipment and materials to perform operations more safely.