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NEW ORLEANS – The rig owner involved in drilling the ill-fated well that blew out in the Gulf of Mexico and spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil will not have to pay many of the pollution claims because it was shielded in a contract with well-owner BP, a federal judge ruled on Thursday. The ruling comes as BP, the states affected by the disaster and the federal government are discussing a settlement over the nation's largest offshore oil spill.
the decision leaves Transocean facing potentially billions of dollars in civil and criminal penalties under the Clean Water Act
Originally posted by IFeelForty
reply to post by Arbitrageur
They aren't exactly being burdened...at all, compared to what they could handle
www.courthousenews.com...
Originally posted by Arbitrageur
Of course the only thing that would make this whole episode right is if they could undo the spill and all the effects from it, and the unfortunate truth is that is never going to happen.
It's not just how they reacted when something went wrong, I think they caused it.
Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
What BP did when something went wrong is what makes it Rape in this case..and they need to be held to account for the horror they pulled.
I don't think Transocean had much of a hand in causing the disaster. If anything, they may have responded inadequately once the disaster started, I will acknowledge that much. But then it's possible that no response could have been adequate...once these huge forces in the Earth are unleashed, they are hard to stop.
Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
So as a matter of perspective from working in the industry, the company that had direct site control (Transocean) wouldn't be high on the liability chart right along side BP?
Hafle is the BP drilling engineer, and in my engineering assessment, it's incompetent for him to say that's a sound engineering practice. It's quite clear to me, as it is to John McCarroll, that it doesn't seem like a sound engineering practice at all.
John McCarroll from Minerals Management Service, a member of a six-person investigative panel holding hearings in Kenner, couldn't hold back his opinion that cement failures allowed the well to flow as he questioned Hafle.
"Don't you think for that size casing, you set up your Halliburton cementer for failure, especially when you had a loss return zone (where drilling mud was seeping into the earth) below the hole?" McCarroll pointedly asked.
"I believe it's a sound engineering practice," said Hafle, who said the internal investigation would have to be completed before anyone knows what went wrong.
"Personally, I would not want to try to attempt that," McCarroll added.