Three Transocean employees are resisting subpoenas to testify before a federal panel investigating why critical safety equipment on the company’s drilling rig failed to stop last year’s oil spill.
The employees and their attorneys have not responded to government subpoenas issued more than two weeks ago and have signaled that they will not appear before the inquiry, led by the Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement.
Michael Bromwich, the bureau director, called the lack of cooperation “unacceptable” in a letter Thursday to Transocean CEO Steven Newman that was obtained by The Houston Chronicle.
Bromwich implored Newman to “make every possible effort” to encourage the Transocean employees to show up for the the joint investigation hearings that begin Monday in Metairie, La.
“In my judgment, this is less a legal issue than one of whether Transocean recognizes its moral and corporate responsibility to cooperate with an investigation into the causal factors of the most significant oil spill in United States history,” Bromwich told Newman. “That is what is at stake with the attendance of the Transocean witnesses.”
But a Transocean attorney said late Thursday in a letter to Bromwich that two of the subpoenaed employees have individual attorneys and are therefore outside the company’s control. Transocean separately has offered to provide an expert in the emergency equipment known as blowout preventers for questioning during next week’s hearings, said the lawyer, Steven Roberts.
“The company has cooperated and continues to cooperate with every investigation into the causes of the spill,” Roberts wrote in the letter. “Everyone at Transocean views the company’s cooperation with investigations into the Macondo incident as both a corporate and a moral imperative.”
The joint investigation panel has held more than 20 days and six rounds of hearings since the April 20 blowout at BP’s Macondo well that killed 11 workers and unleashed the nation’s worst oil spill. The inquiry, now in its final stages, is set next week to delve into the failure of the blowout preventer at Macondo to successfully cut through drill pipe and seal off the well hole, locking oil and gas underground.
A four-month examination of the equipment concluded that the force of surging oil and gas caused drill pipe in the BOP to buckle and be pushed askew, thwarting the device’s sharp rams from slashing through the pipe and sealing the well hole.
According to the forensic analysis, neither human nor mechanical error was to blame for the blowout preventer’s failure to stop gushing oil and gas at the well. Roberts noted that the results of the testing confirm “that the BOP was in proper operating condition at the time of the incident and that its component parts ‘functioned as intended,’” even though “high-pressure flow from the well created conditions that exceeded the scope of (the) BOP’s design constraints.”
The blowout preventer was manufactured by Cameron International and carried on Transocean’s rig.
Bromwich suggested that the subpoenaed Transocean employees were key to shedding more light on the BOP’s performance.
“The nation needs a comprehensive investigation into the causes of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, including issues relating to the failure of the rig’s blowout preventer,” Bromwich said.
Five witnesses from BP, Sperry Sun, forensic analysis firm Det Norske Veritas and Cameron International, which manufactured the blowout preventer, are expected to testify next week.
The subpoenaed Transocean employees are subsea supervisor Ray Odenwald, asset manager James Kent and Geoff Boughton, who served as Transocean’s representative during a four-month probe of the blowout preventer used at the site. Odenwald is one of four Transocean employees who did not testify before the panel last July after initially voluntarily agreeing to answer its questions.
Others on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig or affiliated with the Macondo well also have refused to testify during the Coast Guard and ocean energy bureau’s 11-month-long probe, including at least one BP worker who invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself last July.
The Department of Justice filed a civil suit against Transocean in November, arguing that the company refused to turn over documents subpoenaed as part of its oil spill investigation. Transocean argued that the document requests were overly broad.
The Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal watchdog agency that has probed scores of industrial accidents, also has said it ran into roadblocks getting crew members on the Deepwater Horizon rig to testify under oath.
It’s silly to blame Transocean. These individuals have separate counsel and their counsel are undoubtedly telling them “DO NOT TESTIFY”. If anyone is to blame, it’s the dopes at the Dept. of Justice, starting at the top. Once Eric Holder announced that the Gov’t was considering criminal charges, it was inevitable that these individuals would remain silent. Look what happened to Tony Hayward. He testified and now there are rumblings about charging him with perjury. Is it any wonder that the lower-level people, who have no knowledge of the legal system, are going to take their lawyers’ advice?
If Transocean doesn’t want to cooperate, then they need to lose all their federal tax breaks. Simple as that.
pull their liscense to operate. failing to resond is a serious safety violation
Just grant one of them immunity and have him testify against the others. First onem to take the offer wins. That will get the truth out.
Lose what tax breaks? Pull what license? Transocean isn’t even based in the US. The government’s own examiner of the BOP has said nothing was wrong with the BOP–the problem was a piece of the drill pipe that got caught in it as a result of the blowout
I’m surprised anyone in the oil industry would testify in that federal witch hunt. It would be like furnishing the rope for your own lynching.