provided various services, including cement work
Under federal law, even in the case of a major accident, the company responsible for the oil well acts in concert with government in cleanup activities and can help put out information about the response effort.
Shortly after the gulf spill, government agencies and BP set up a joint information center and a Web site detailing remediation efforts. In this case, the communications effort, which includes the information center, based in a Shell-owned training and conference center in Robert, La., consists of roughly 65 employees, 10 of whom work for BP, Coast Guard officials said.
As the administration scrambled to respond to the unfolding environmental and economic disaster in the gulf, two Senate committees opened hearings into the cause of the April 20 accident. Executives of the three main companies involved in the spill — BP, Transocean and Halliburton — took turns pointing the finger at others for the failures of the systems designed to prevent a major blowout, even as they cautioned that the cause of the explosion was not yet known.
In their first testimony since the spill, top executives of BP, which owns the well; Transocean, which owned the drilling rig and did much of the work; and Halliburton, which provided various services, including cement work on the drill hole, all sought to shift blame.
“As a responsible party under the Oil Pollution Act, we will carry out our responsibilities,” said Lamar McKay, president and chairman of BP America. But he added that Transocean “had responsibility for the safety of the drilling operations.”
Steven L. Newman, president and chief executive of Transocean, said that the accident had to have arisen from elements of the work done by other companies.
“Were all appropriate tests run on the cement and the casing?” he asked, apparently implicating Halliburton.
