NEW ORLEANS — BP failed to implement a new safety plan on the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling rig even though the company realized a blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was its greatest danger, an expert witness for people and businesses suing the company testified Tuesday.
University of California-Berkeley engineering professor Robert Bea was the first witness at a civil trial to determine how much more BP and other companies should pay for the spill. Bea said BP PLC didn’t implement a 2-year-old safety management program on the rig that caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
“It’s a classic failure of management and leadership in BP,” said Bea, a former BP consultant who also investigated the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill and New Orleans levee breaches after Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
The London-based company has said its “Operating Management System” was designed to drive a rigorous and systematic approach to safety and risk management. During cross-examination by a BP lawyer, Bea said the company made “significant efforts” to improve safety management as early as 2003.
However, BP implemented its new safety plan at only one of the seven rigs the company owned or leased in the Gulf at the time of the disaster.
Bea said it was “tragic” and “egregious” that BP didn’t apply its own safety program to the Deepwater Horizon before the Macondo well blowout triggered the explosion that killed 11 workers and spawned the huge spill. Transocean owned the rig; BP leased it.
A plaintiffs’ lawyer who questioned Bea showed him a transcript of a deposition of Tony Hayward, who was BP’s CEO at the time of the disaster. Hayward was asked if the deadly April 20, 2010, blowout could have been averted if BP had implemented the safety management program in the Gulf.
“There is possible potential,” Hayward responded. “Undoubtedly.”
Bea said BP’s “culture of every dollar counts” was reflected in a May 2009 e-mail sent by BP well team leader John Guide: “The DW Horizon embraced every dollar matters since I arrived 18 months ago,” Guide wrote. “We have saved BP millions, and no one had totell us.”
In a report prepared for the trial, Bea concluded that BP’s “process safety failures” were a cause of the blowout.
“Financially, BP had the resources to effectively put into place a process safety systemthat could have prevented the Macondo disaster,” Bea testified.
Bea said he had warned BP management several years before the Gulf rig explosion that “culture is key” to the company’s ability to operate safely. Bea said the company didn’t heed his warnings.
“You still don’t get it,” he recalled telling BP officials in 2007. “You have not implemented any recommendations. Process safety is deadly serious, and you’ve turned it into a traveling roadshow.”
During cross-examination, Bea said those remarks were in response to a skit that BP presented at a conference that didn’t reflect his views on safety management.
As he questioned Bea, BP attorney Mike Brock recited a long list of steps that BP took to improve safety, citing them as evidence that the company wasn’t “cutting corners in the area of safety.”
Bea’s testimony openedthe second day of a civil trial that could result in BP and its partners being forced to pay billions of dollars more in damages. The case went to trial Monday after attempts to reach an eleventh-hour settlement failed.
BP has already pleaded guilty to manslaughter and other criminal charges, and has racked up more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses, including cleanup costs, compensation for businesses and individuals, and $4 billion in criminal penalties.
One of the biggest questions facing U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who is hearing the case without a jury, is whether BP acted with gross negligence.
Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay a minimum of $1,100 per barrel of spilled oil; the fines nearly quadruple to about $4,300 a barrel for companies found grossly negligent, meaning BP could be on the hook for nearly $18 billion.
Business, Pages 28 on 02/27/2013