UPDATE: Another witness has dropped out of hearings this week held by Coast Guard and U.S. Minerals Services investigators into the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
James Mansfield, an assistant marine engineer with Transocean, owner of the now-sunken drilling rig, bowed out of his scheduled testimony today for medical reasons, Coast Guard officials said. He was expected to testify in July.
On Wednesday, the joint investigative panel said BP’s Robert Koluza, a senior official aboard the rig on the day of the fatal April 20 explosion, had taken the Fifth Amendment and would not be testifying. Donald Vidrine, BP’s well site leader, also is not testifying as planned today.
– Brett Clanton
The Coast Guard/MMS investigation into the Deepwater Horizon accident will continue just outside New Orleans on Thursday, but a much-anticipated confrontation appears to be off the schedule for now.
Donald Vidrine, a BP senior official on the rig — “the company man” as the position is called — will not be testifying. Vidrine and Transocean’s rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, reportedly got into an argument about procedures the morning of the accident. Harrell is still on the schedule.
Vidrine did not seem to be aware of the seriousness of the situation on the rig in the final hours, according to a statement he gave to the Coast Guard in an April 23 telephone interview, a transcript of which was obtained by the Chronicle.
The document says Vidrine: “Did negative test at 7:50 p.m. and it was a good test,” referring to a negative pressure test done on the well late that day.
BP officials said Wednesday in a briefing with reporters in Washington, D.C., that the test actually showed an unusual reading of no pressure on a line running from the rig to the blowout preventer, a result that should have been looked at more closely.
In the summary Vidrine then said he went to the rig floor to check seawater pumping operations, found they appeared to be going properly, and then returned to his office.
“To us, this says BP was not freaking out,” said an analyst note from research firm Tudor Pickering & Holt, which reviewed Vidrine’s statement for the Chronicle. “You don’t go back to the rig office if you think there are big problems.”
Also missing from the original Thursday Coast Guard hearing schedule is Robert Kaluza, another senior BP official on the rig. In a statement given to Coast Guard investigators on April 23 via phone, Kaluza detailed well operations on the final day on the rig. Of particular interest are comments he made about what happened after a spacer of mud was pushed up the riser pipe between the BOP and rig and a negative pressure test was done.
“Permit had to monitor on the kill side and Randy said to do it down the drill pipe,” the summary of Kaluza’s statement said. That essentially meant per the drilling permit BP filed with federal officials they were supposed to do the test on the kill pipe, not down the drill pipe. “Randy” refers to another supervisor on the rig.
According to the Tudor Pickering Holt & Co. folks, the deviation from the permit probably didn’t do any harm to the rig, “but it does highlight that decisions were not all following the original plans,” they said.
An attorney for Kaluza put out a statement Wednesday on behalf of his client:
“Bob is a dedicated, hard-working, conscientious man. He began as a roughneck and has worked 35 years in oilfields throughout the United States. Bob did no wrong on the Deepwater Horizon, and we will make damn sure that this comes out at the appropriate time.”
