Asia Bizz: BP Rig Engineer States Main Rig Arm Was Disabled Before Explosion
One of the BP engineers, Mike Williams, who was on board of the sunken Transocean Rig of BP, stated to the press that before the accident took place, one of the key arms of the rig had been intentionally disabled. He stated that the night of the 20th of April, an alarm had been triggered, and it was found that a flammable gas called methane had spread over the rig’s deck. The rig officials didn’t want to wake up the crew at three o’clock in the night.
Williams statement was shocking for on the 20th April, the rig caught fire. The Transocean rig was drilling a well a mile below the sea surface, and it was under the license of London based oil giant, BP. Williams also stated, that the rig had hundreds of individual alarms, which would go off intentionally to see if they were in good condition.
At a hearing before a joint US panel of US Coast Guards and The Internal Department Bureau Of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, the Transocean officials who were on the rig that day stated that they were 43 days behind schedule in drilling the Macondo Well, which was due to mechanical problems faced on the rig.
Williams has filed a suit against Transocean, stating that the main monitoring computer called “A Chair”, used to be frequently offline due to mechanical issues. The officials had named it the ‘blue screen of death’, for it would often turn into a blue screen and would not show any data.
