The drilling rig fight that (maybe) wasn’t

One piece of the public’s understanding of the Deepwater Horizon accident comes from reports of an argument between a BP and Transocean official on the rig April 20, the day of the accident. It’s a story that has helped shape the way a lot of people look at who’s to blame, but also a story that may not be all that it at first seemed.

The Wall Street Journal had an early account of the alleged dispute, which pitted one Donald Vidrine (BP’s so-called “company man”) against Jimmy Wayne Harrell, Transocean’s rig leader. According to the story, written testimony by Transocean electronics tech Michael Williams said the disagreement came during a meeting over the final days’ plans:

According to Mr. Williams’s account, Transocean’s rig manager, Jimmy Wayne Harrell, was discussing the plans for the next few hours’ work, including taking out the drilling mud and running a test to make sure gas wasn’t seeping into the well. Mr. Harrell explained in the meeting that he had received the plans from BP.

Then, according to Mr. Williams’s statement, the top-ranked BP employee assigned to the rig, Donald Vidrine, disagreed and said “that was not the correct procedure.”

A Transocean driller in charge of the crew, Dewey Revette, tried to ease the tension. “We’ll get it worked out. Let’s get up there and go to work,” he said, according to Mr. Williams’s statement. Mr. Revette, 48 years old, was among 11 workers who died on the rig.

It’s a compelling story on a lot of levels. It creates a villain — the BP manager. It has a hero — the Transocean manager. And it even has a martyr — Mr. Revette.

Williams appeared on 60 Minutes the day after the WSJ article. According to a transcript of that appearance:

(WILLIAMS) I had the BP company man sitting directly beside me. And he literally perked up and said “Well my process is different. And I think we’re going to do it this way.”

And they kind of lined out how he thought it should go that day.

So there was short of a chest-bumping kind of deal. The communication seemed to break down as to who was ultimately in charge.

The “chest bumping” comment heightens the conflict and helps fuel the narrative in the minds of many that BP was arguing against safety.

This past week, during hearings conducted by the Coast Guard and Minerals Management Service, that story of the conflict was further embellished but also challenged.

Douglas Brown, chief mechanic on the rig, testified about his recollection of the argument, according to the Chron’s Brett Clanton, saying it was a “skirmish.”

But Harrell’s own testimony, and that of another colleague, downplays this notion of an argument, and names a different BP official, Robert Kaluza, as the worker involved.

In testimony Thursday, Jimmy Harrell, the offshore installation manager, said BP had not planned on April 20 to perform a negative pressure test, which he considered crucial to safety, and which he had recommended that morning in a meeting with BP’s representative on the rig, Robert Kaluza.

But he denied getting into a heated debate with Kaluza about the recommendation, as Transocean’s chief mechanic, Douglas Brown, recounted in testimony on Wednesday.
“There wasn’t an argument or nothing,” Harrell told a joint Coast Guard and U.S. Minerals Management Service panel at hearings in Kenner. “I did ask a few of them to stay back to discuss a negative test.”

Kaluza accepted the advice and BP performed two of the tests that day, Harrell said.

What’s my point? That things are rarely as clear-cut and simple as they seem — despite the way we in the media will portray them from story to story or the way most people imagine situations playing out. The idea of BP arguing for an unsafe route and everyone else wanting to err on the side of caution is attractive, but likely not the only element of the story.

As readers have pointed out, there are systems in place on board a rig where any number of people can speak up if they see a safety issue. While BP was clearly in charge of the operation and had plenty of reasons to push ahead quickly, it’s not as though everyone else was bound and gagged.

There were a whole lot of eyes watching this well as it was drilled and completed, both on shore and at sea. If one simple fault can be found, one lesson that can be put in a technical manual with the heading “Don’t Do This,” we will all be very lucky. More likely, however, there was a long, subtle trail of issues and decisions to blame, not just one choice following a disagreement. This likely means the lessons will be harder to understand, too.