Blowout Preventer

Crews successfully removed the failed blowout preventer from BP's broken oil well Friday, an important step toward killing the well for good and a hopeful development for federal investigators who view the device as key evidence that will be inspected to determine why it did not shut off the disastrous undersea gusher. The blowout preventer was removed from the wellhead, which is 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, at 1:20 p.m. Central time, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said in an e-mail Thursday.

  The petroleum industry and federal regulators focused more on exploration and production than safety in the years leading up to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, helping to set the stage for the worst offshore environmental disaster in U.S. history, according to a new independent report by the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. Conducted at the behest of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, the report said the "multiple flawed decisions that led to a blowout" on the Deepwater Horizon rig resulted from "a deficient overall systems approach to safety" among the corporations that ran the drilling of the Macondo well, including BP, Transocean and Halliburton.

Top oil rig officials knew that the blowout preventer -- the mechanism that failed to shut off the geyser of oil gushing from a well up to a drilling platform -- suffered mechanical problems at least three months before the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, according to testimony Tuesday at a federal hearing in suburban New Orleans. The testimony is significant because it shows that the rig's top officers were aware that this crucial piece of equipment had known problems.

The blowout preventer designed to shut down a BP well in an emergency couldn't stop a gusher of deep sea oil into the Gulf of Mexico because a damaged piece of drill pipe got in the way, according to a federal report released Wednesday. When the Deepwater Horizon rig crew lost control of the well in April, the force of rushing oil buckled a section of drill pipe, which then became stuck in the blowout preventer. The safety device was activated, but the mangled pipe made it impossible for shearing rams to close and plug the flow of oil. The report was compiled by Det Norske Veritas for the Interior Department after the contracting firm examined the blowout preventer as part of a series of investigations into the cause of the massive BP oil spill.

The blowout preventer designed to shut down a BP well in an emergency couldn't stop a gusher of deep sea oil into the Gulf of Mexico because a damaged piece of drill pipe got in the way, according to a federal report released Wednesday. When the Deepwater Horizon rig crew lost control of the well in April, the force of rushing oil buckled a section of drill pipe, which then became stuck in the blowout preventer. The safety device was activated, but the mangled pipe made it impossible for shearing rams to close and plug the flow of oil. The report was compiled by Det Norske Veritas for the Interior Department after the contracting firm examined the blowout preventer as part of a series of investigations into the cause of the massive BP oil spill.

BP and government officials said Thursday that they planned to remove the damaged existing blowout preventer on top of the company's troubled oil well and replace it with a new, stronger one — a move they said would allow them to safely carry out the final "kill" of the well, but would delay the ultimate fix until after Labor Day. Earlier in the crisis, BP had estimated that it would be able to complete the final step to plug the well, called...

High seas on the Gulf of Mexico forced BP on Monday to delay operations for up to three days to raise from the seabed the piece of equipment that failed to prevent the massive oil spill, federal officials said. Retired Coast Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill response, said that waves were 6-8 feet tall and crews were worried about the risk of suspending hulking pieces of equipment from a crane underwater during rocking caused by the waves. He said the operations were expected to be pushed back two to three days, meaning it could be as late as Thursday before engineers begin to remove a temporary cap, which stopped oil from flowing into the sea in mid-July, and the failed blowout preventer, which is a key piece of evidence in investigations.

Congressional committee members probing the catastrophic gulf oil spill homed in Wednesday on possible defects in cementing and in a critical safety device as they grilled oil company executives about what Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) called "a calamitous series of equipment and operational failures." The BP well, drilled 18,000 feet below the seafloor, may have failed two critical pressure tests in the hours before its April 20 blowout, according to testimony from executives and interviews with company officials, along with more than 100,000 pages of documents.

With a new blowout preventer in place and a 5,000-foot column of cement filling its core, the BP well is no longer in danger of leaking oil, the federal spill response chief said Saturday — although he said it must still be plugged from the bottom for the job to be complete. "I'm very pleased to announce that with the new blowout preventer on this well, and the cement that was previously put in … this well does not constitute a threat to the Gulf of Mexico at this point," said Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who has served as the government's point person on the response.

The ultimate sealing of BP's gulf oil well may not get underway until late this month or early October because experts want more time to analyze the well, fish out a broken pipe and possibly apply another cement seal on the top for "more insurance" against unlikely troubles, a top federal official said. National spill-response chief Thad Allen, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday, reiterated his promise that there was "no threat" of oil leaks from the well now that a stronger blowout preventer had been placed on top of it. The new equipment gives experts the luxury of taking a few extra steps to ensure that they will not encounter problems with the final "bottom kill.

Facing the worst offshore oil disaster in American history, BP rapidly developed and implemented new technologies to contain the damage and the government watchdogs established "effective oversight," according to a report issued on Monday by the presidential panel investigating the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. But the rare praise for the way they responded once disaster struck was coupled with scathing indictments of...

The chief attorney for the presidential panel investigating the gulf oil spill said Monday that he had found no proof that BP sacrificed safety to save money as it drilled its Macondo well, contradicting earlier assertions made in other government investigations of the disaster. "To date, we have not seen a single instance where a human being made a conscious decision to favor dollars over safety," general counsel Fred H. Bartlit Jr. told the panel during a lengthy presentation on the causes of the April 20 rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

With the BP oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico successfully contained, Shell Alaska announced Wednesday that it had filed an application to proceed with exploratory offshore drilling in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska. The Obama administration suspended all offshore operations in the remote, fragile Arctic seas this year after the BP spill, but Shell officials said they had prepared a more robust oil blowout containment plan and were ready to proceed next summer with a single well 17 miles off the North Slope.

The ultimate sealing of BP's gulf oil well may not get underway until late this month or early October because experts want more time to analyze the well, fish out a broken pipe and possibly apply another cement seal on the top for "more insurance" against unlikely troubles, a top federal official said. National spill-response chief Thad Allen, in a conference call with reporters Wednesday, reiterated his promise that there was "no threat" of oil leaks from the well now that a stronger blowout preventer had been placed on top of it. The new equipment gives experts the luxury of taking a few extra steps to ensure that they will not encounter problems with the final "bottom kill.

An internal investigation released Wednesday by BP concluded that a series of mechanical and human failures by its own crews and its contractors led to the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 men and set in motion one of the world's worst oil spills. The oil company accepted a share of the responsibility but also took aim at contractors Transocean and Halliburton, setting off another round of finger-pointing that began soon after the rig sank. No single factor caused the disaster, concludes the 234-page report summarizing the first of several investigations of the disaster.

With a new blowout preventer in place and a 5,000-foot column of cement filling its core, the BP well is no longer in danger of leaking oil, the federal spill response chief said Saturday — although he said it must still be plugged from the bottom for the job to be complete. "I'm very pleased to announce that with the new blowout preventer on this well, and the cement that was previously put in … this well does not constitute a threat to the Gulf of Mexico at this point," said Thad Allen, the retired Coast Guard admiral who has served as the government's point person on the response.

Federal investigators are homing in on the role that BP's Houston operations had in possible design flaws that may have contributed to the April 20 blowout of the Deepwater Horizon well. In particular, they are focusing on John Guide, a Houston-based supervisor who BP workers said was the main official with authority over the design of the Gulf of Mexico well. "What was interesting to me is that [two BP officials] have pointed at Mr. John Guide, the well team leader, as the decision maker," Coast Guard Capt.

Engineers have at least temporarily stopped the flow of oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico from a gushing BP well, the federal government's top oil-spill commander, U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, said Thursday morning. The "top kill" effort, launched Wednesday afternoon by industry and government engineers, had pumped enough drilling fluid to block oil and gas spewing from the well, Allen said. The pressure from the well was very low, he said, but persisting. The top kill effort is not complete, officials caution.

Crews successfully removed the failed blowout preventer from BP's broken oil well Friday, an important step toward killing the well for good and a hopeful development for federal investigators who view the device as key evidence that will be inspected to determine why it did not shut off the disastrous undersea gusher. The blowout preventer was removed from the wellhead, which is 5,000 feet deep in the Gulf of Mexico, at 1:20 p.m. Central time, BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said in an e-mail Thursday.

High seas on the Gulf of Mexico forced BP on Monday to delay operations for up to three days to raise from the seabed the piece of equipment that failed to prevent the massive oil spill, federal officials said. Retired Coast Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the spill response, said that waves were 6-8 feet tall and crews were worried about the risk of suspending hulking pieces of equipment from a crane underwater during rocking caused by the waves. He said the operations were expected to be pushed back two to three days, meaning it could be as late as Thursday before engineers begin to remove a temporary cap, which stopped oil from flowing into the sea in mid-July, and the failed blowout preventer, which is a key piece of evidence in investigations.