BP / Halliburton / Transocean / Cameron All Under Fire for Oil Disaster

As Congress prepares to hold hearings into the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a billion-dollar question is bobbing on the oil-slicked waves: Whose fault is it?

So far, BP, the British company that leased the deepwater rig, has commanded the spotlight. 

As Congress prepares to hold hearings into the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a billion-dollar question is bobbing on the oil-slicked waves: Whose fault is it?

So far, BP, the British company that leased the deepwater rig, has commanded the spotlight. 

As Congress prepares to hold hearings into the April 20 explosion that sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, a billion-dollar question is bobbing on the oil-slicked waves: Whose fault is it?

So far, BP, the British company that leased the deepwater rig, has commanded the spotlight. 

But the oil giant is emphatic about blaming the rig’s owner and operator, a Swiss company called Transocean, for the accident.

Two other companies — Halliburton, which handled a critical procedure about a day before the accident,

and Cameron International, which made the blowout preventer that failed to engage —

have also found themselves caught in the swirl of litigation and finger-pointing. [br]

The Coast Guard has officially named both BP and Transocean as “responsible parties” in the incident. 

But representatives from all four companies have been summoned to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the accident.

While many Americans are already familiar with BP, the hearings are likely to represent a crash course in the patchwork of businesses that peddle their equipment and expertise in the fast-expanding deepwater drilling market.

Transocean, which was based in Houston for decades before moving to Switzerland via the Cayman Islands, is a leader in the field of offshore oil drilling,

with a global fleet of more than 130 mobile offshore drilling platforms — massive, highly complex structures of floating engineering, each costing hundreds of millions of dollars to build.

Last year, BP accounted for 12 percent of Transocean’s operating earnings of $11.5 billion, according to company filings.

The Deepwater Horizon, a nine-year-old rig designed to send a drill miles below the ocean’s surface, was being leased to BP at a daily rate of about $500,000, according to this story in the New York Times.

Analysts describe Transocean as having a “solid reputation” within the offshore industry,

and just two years ago, it received the industry’s top safety award from the federal Minerals Management Service.

Still, it eliminated bonuses for its top executives last year, citing the deaths of four rig workers in safety-related accidents.

The move was meant “to promote the goal of an incident-free workplace and, in particular, the avoidance of future fatal accidents,” the company said in its annual report.

Speaking to investors in a conference call on Thursday, Transocean’s chief executive, Steven L. Newman, was quick to push back against BP over blame for the spill. [br]

He said that “environmental exposures related to the hydrocarbons released from the well are the responsibility of BP.”

Some experts have suggested shoddy cement work at the drill site as one possible cause of the blowout.

Halliburton, which provides oil services in more than 70 countries for the biggest private and national oil companies, had that particular task.

Halliburton has been accused of doing a poor cement job before — most recently off the coast of Australia last year, where a shallower well blew out, leaking oil for months.

A Halliburton employee testified to Australian authorities that he repumped concrete, a procedure he characterized as ill-advised but directed by the rig operator, a Thai company.

Robert MacKenzie, a former cement engineer in the oil industry and now an analyst at FBR Capital Markets, co-wrote a recent report that said,

“Had cement isolated the production zone, there would be no flow.”

But he also wrote that several factors could have explained the failure, including poor engineering, poor procedures and incomplete mud removal.

Halliburton has said that its application of the cement at the Deepwater Horizon project was consistent with industry standards and the well design.

The company, based in Houston, said that it was cooperating with the investigations and that it would be premature to speculate on any causes of the accident.

Another question in the most recent accident is why a device aboard the Deepwater Horizon, known as a blowout preventer, was not activated.

It is supposed to seal off the well and stop the oil flow in an emergency.

Cameron, its manufacturer, has maintained a low profile.

“Everyone has questions as to what may have caused this accident to occur,” said Jack B. Moore, the company’s chief executive, during a call with investors shortly after the accident.

“While I’m sure that this answer will come once the full investigation is completed, our focus at this time is on assisting Transocean and BP to get this well shut in.”

Based in Houston, Cameron serves a variety of industries, but it is best known for providing valves and other equipment to the oil and gas business.

The company is by far the king of blowout preventers, with operating revenue of $5.3 billion and more than 400 of its devices on rigs at varying depths around the globe,

according to Rigzone, a drilling industry publication.

It remains unclear why Cameron’s device did not activate.