Following is an excerpt from "Emptywheel"
Marcy, if you haven¹t seen it already, you must see the exclusive 60 Minutes
interview with an eyewitness to the disaster.  Here are a few excerpts:

ŠŠŠŠŠŠ..

But the trouble was just beginning: when drilling resumed, Williams says
there was an accident on the rig that has not been reported before.  He
says, four weeks before the explosion, the rig¹s most vital piece of safety
equipment was damagedŠ.

Williams says, during a test, they closed the gasket.  But while it was shut
tight, a crewman on deck accidentally nudged a joystick, applying hundreds
of thousands of pounds of force, and moving 15 feet of drill pipe through
the closed blowout preventer.  Later, a man monitoring drilling fluid rising
to the top made a troubling find.

³He discovered chunks of rubber in the drilling fluid.  He thought it was
important enough to gather this double handful of chunks of rubber and bring
them into the driller shack.  I recall asking the supervisor if this was out
of the ordinary.  And he says, ŒOh, it¹s no big deal.¹  And I thought, how
can it be not a big deal?  There¹s chunks of our seal is now missing.²

ŠŠŠŠŠŠ..

Williams¹ survival may be critical to the investigation.  We took his story
to Dr. Bob Bea, a professor of engineering at the University of California,
Berkeley.

Last week, the White House asked Bea to help analyze the Deepwater Horizon
accident.  Bea investigated the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster for NASA and
the Hurricane Katrina disaster for the National Science FoundationŠ.

³So if the annular is damaged, if I understand you correctly, you can¹t do
the pressure tests in a reliable way?² Pelley asked.

³That¹s correct. You may get pressure test recordings, but because you¹re
leaking pressure, they are not reliable,² Bea explainedŠ.

³The morning of the disaster, according to Williams, there was an argument
in front of all the men on the ship between the Transocean manager and the
BP manager.  Do you know what that argument is about?² Pelley asked.

Bea replied, ³Yes,² telling Pelley the argument was about who was the boss.

In finishing the well, the plan was to have a subcontractor, Halliburton,
place three concrete plugs, like corks, in the column.  The Transocean
manager wanted to do this with the column full of heavy drilling fluid ­
what drillers call ³mud² ­ to keep the pressure down below contained. But
the BP manager wanted to begin to remove the ³mud² before the last plug was
set.  That would reduce the pressure controlling the well before the plugs
were finished.

Asked why BP would do that, Bea told Pelley, ³It expedites the subsequent
steps.²

³It¹s a matter of going faster,² Pelley remarked.

³Faster, sure,² Bea replied.

Bea said BP had won that argument.

³If the Œmud¹ had been left in the column, would there have been a blowout?²
Pelley asked.

³It doesn¹t look like it,² Bea replied.
Jh

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