Senior executives at major oil companies Total SA (TOT) and Chevron Corp. (CVX) Tuesday criticized the safety of the design BP PLC (BP) used on its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which spilled millions of barrels of oil earlier this year following a blowout.
Senior executives at major oil companies Total SA (TOT) and Chevron
Corp. (CVX) Tuesday criticized the safety of the design BP PLC (BP) used on its
Macondo well in the
Gulf of Mexico
, which spilled millions of
barrels of oil earlier this year following a blowout.
Their comments come the day after BP's new chief executive Bob Dudley defended
his company's actions in the
Gulf of Mexico
and
accused the media and some people in the oil industry of fear-mongering and a
"rush to judgment" that exacerbated the crisis.
Roland Festor, managing director of Total's Exploration and Production unit in
the
U.K.
and
Richard Cohagan, managing director of Chevron
U.K.
, told
a parliamentary committee Tuesday they would have used different designs for
Macondo because some of the techniques employed by BP weren't suitable for that
type of reservoir.
They were echoing concerns raised at a Congressional hearing this summer by
other major oil companies, such as Royal Dutch Shell PLC (RDSB.LN) and
ExxonMobil Corp. (XOM), about the safety of BP's deep water oil drilling
operations in the
Gulf of Mexico
. Most oil companies operating
in the
Gulf of Mexico
have sought to distance themselves from BP and its
practices.
The Total and Chevron executives didn't go as far as to say the well design
caused the blowout that destroyed the Deepwater Horizon, killing 11 men and
triggering an oil spill of almost five million barrels. It is impossible to say
why the disaster happened when most investigations have yet to reach a
conclusion, they said.
BP's internal investigation concluded that well design played no part in the
accident.
Cohagan said BP designed the Macondo exploration well so that it could also be
used to produce oil later, thus saving the cost of drilling another well on the
same field--something Chevron doesn't do.
Because it doesn't use exploration wells for production later on, Chevron can
use more steel liners and a greater number of larger physical barriers that
improve the safety of the well, Cohagan said.
"We would not have used the type of cement BP used," said Festor. "It
is quite surprising for us that it used this type of nitrogen foam cement on
top of a high pressure reservoir," like Macondo, he said.
BP's internal investigation determined that failure of cement at the bottom of
the well was one of the biggest factors in the blowout.
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