Halliburton Knew About Bad Cement Job Before the Spill

Photo courtsey US Coast Guard.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Halliburton, the oil field services giant that provided the cement for BP’s Macondo well, knew months before the explosion and spill that the cement mixture used on the well was not stable, according to new findings the National Oil Spill Commission released Thursday. Despite multiple failed tests on the mixture, Halliburton and BP used the cement on the well.

In the months since the spill, it’s become clear that something went wrong with the cement job on the Macondo well, which should have prevented oil and gas from entering the well and causing the April 20 explosion. BP used a nitrogen foam cement that Halliburton recommended and supplied on the well. In a letter to the commission, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., cites documents obtained from Halliburton and tests conducted by cement experts at Chevron that suggest that there were plenty of warnings about this cement mixture before the explosion.

The documents from Halliburton show that the company conducted two tests on the cement mixture in February 2010, and both indicated that it was not stable. The company provided the results of one of those two tests to BP in March, but Bartlit states that “There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data or that BP personnel raised any questions about it.”

It appears that a third test conducted on April 13, seven days before the explosion, again demonstrated that the mix was unstable, but Halliburton did not provide that data to BP. Only a fourth test, performed after Halliburton’s lab modified the testing procedure, produced results that found the mixture to be stable—but that data was not available until after the explosion, which indicates that the mixture was used with no lab results that suggested it would be stable.

Further, the letter includes data from testing that Chevron conducted on a indentical mixture for the spill commission, released on October 26, which also found that the slurry was not stable:

Chevron’s report states, among other things, that its lab personnel were unable to generate stable foam cement in the laboratory using the materials provided by Halliburton and available design information regarding the slurry used at the Macondo well. Although laboratory foam stability tests cannot replicate field conditions perfectly, these data strongly suggest that the foam cement used at Macondo was unstable. This may have contributed to the blowout.

The report concludes that while there are tests designed to ensure that a cement job is stable and methods to remedy it if they are found to be faulty, “BP and/or Transocean personnel misinterpreted or chose not to conduct such tests at the Macondo well.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate