Oil field services company Halliburton has accused BP of concealing crucial information about the cause of last year's disastrous Macondo well blowout “in hopes of covering up its own culpability.”
In a lawsuit filed yesterday in a Texas state court in Houston, Halliburton said BP purposely withheld information about a hydrocarbon-bearing sand in the Macondo well, the existence of which should have prompted costly changes to the project.
Halliburton did the work to cement the Macondo well's production casing into place. And the company has faced harsh criticism over its performance. Experts have repeatedly said the well's cement job failed, allowing hydrocarbons to flow into the well. The blowout killed eleven crew members on the
Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and sparked the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
“The motive behind BP's intentional nondisclosure of this upper hydrocarbon bearing zone is apparent – profit and greed,” Halliburton said in the lawsuit.
BP called the lawsuit “the latest attempt by Halliburton to divert attention from its role in the
Deepwater Horizon incident and its failure to meet its responsibilities.”
BP said that it has accepted responsibility for the spill, while Halliburton “has refused to accept any responsibility or accountability.” BP is setting aside $20bn to handle claims arising from the spill and had paid out $6.7bn as of 31 July to compensate spill victims and cover cleanup costs.
In its lawsuit, Halliburton said that on 13 April 2010 – a week before the blowout – BP identified what it said was the shallowest hydrocarbon-bearing sand at Macondo. But wireline data from the well show another sand formation higher up.
Halliburton accused BP of hiding information about this higher zone “before and after the incident.”
Federal regulations require that the top of a well's cement column be at least 500ft above the highest hydrocarbon bearing zone, Halliburton said. Acknowledging the existence of a higher formation would have forced BP to redesign the project, costing “BP millions of additional dollars for a project that was already over budget and behind schedule.”
Had Halliburton been aware of what it called the “concealed sand,” the company said it would have insisted that changes be made to the cement program.
BP conducted its own, internal investigation into the Macondo blowout. And in its report on the accident, BP “depicts all other sands” in the well “except the critical concealed sand.” Halliburton said BP “selectively and self-servingly omitted reference” to the shallowest hydrocarbon-bearing sands.
Halliburton said it did not become aware of this “concealed sand” until attorneys began taking depositions in the litigation stemming from the spill. Halliburton said BP purposely concealed this information from the US Coast Guard, the Justice Department, Congress and President Barack Obama's oil spill commission.
BP said “multiple investigations have identified serious problems of the cementing of the well, as a potential contributory factor to the
Deepwater Horizondisaster – not only BP's own investigation.”