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by Greg Palast – Exclusive for EcoWatch.org
Thursday, 19. April, 2012

Two years before the Deepwater Horizon blow-out in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP off-shore rig suffered a nearly identical blow-out, but BP concealed the first one from the U.S. regulators and Congress.

This week, EcoWatch.org located an eyewitness with devastating new information about the Caspian Sea oil-rig blow-out which BP had concealed from government and the industry.

The witness, whose story is backed up by rig workers who were evacuated from BP’s Caspian platform, said that had BP revealed the full story as required by industry practice, the eleven Gulf of Mexico workers “could have had a chance” of survival. But BP’s insistence on using methods proven faulty sealed their fate.

One cause of the blow-outs was the same in both cases:  the use of a money-saving technique—plugging holes with “quick-dry” cement.

By hiding the disastrous failure of its penny-pinching cement process in 2008, BP was able to continue to use the dangerous methods in the Gulf of Mexico—causing the worst oil spill in U.S. history. April 20 marks the second anniversary of the Gulf oil disaster.

There were several failures in common to the two incidents identified by the eyewitness. He is an industry insider whose identity and expertise we have confirmed. His name and that of other witnesses we contacted must be withheld for their safety.

The failures revolve around the use of “quick-dry” cement, the uselessness of blow-out preventers, “mayhem” in evacuation procedures and an atmosphere of fear which prevents workers from blowing the whistle on safety problems.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr., president of Waterkeeper Alliance and senior attorney for Natural Resources Defense Council, said, “We have laws that make it illegal to hide this kind of information. At the very least, these are lies by omission. When you juxtapose their knowledge of this incident upon the oil companies constant and persistent assurances of safety to regulators, investigators and shareholders, you have all the elements to prove that their concealment of the information was criminal.”

The first blow-out occurred on a BP rig in the Caspian Sea off the coast of Baku, Azerbaijan, in September 2008. BP was able to conceal such an extraordinary event with the help of the ruling regime of Azerbaijan, other oil companies and, our investigators learned, the Bush Administration.

Our investigation began just days after the explosion and sinking of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010 when this reporter received an extraordinary message from a terrified witness—from a ship floating in the Caspian Sea:

“I know how …. Would not be wise for me to communicate via [official] IT system, ….”

When the insider was contacted on a secure line, he stated that he witnessed a blow-out and the panicked evacuation of the giant BP “ACG” drilling platform.

To confirm the witness’ story, British television’s premier investigative program, Dispatches, sent this reporter under cover into Baku, Azerbaijan, with a cameraman. While approaching the BP oil terminal, the Islamic republic’s Security Ministry arrested the crew.

To avoid diplomatic difficulties, we were quickly released. However, two new witnesses suddenly vanished, all communication lost with them, after they confirmed the facts of the 2008 blow-out. Both told us they had been evacuated from the BP off-shore platform as it filled with methane.

Furthermore, witnesses confirmed that, “there was mud (drill-pipe cement) blown out all over the platform.” It appears the cement cap failed to hold back high-pressure gases which, “engulfed the entire platform in methane gas,” which is highly explosive.

In both cases, the insider told us, BP had used “quick-dry” cement to cap their well bores and the cost-saving procedure failed catastrophically.

We have learned this week that BP failed to notify the International Association of Drilling Contractors (IADC) about the failure of the cement. (British companies report incidents as minor as a hammer dropped.) Notification would have alerted Gulf cement contractor Halliburton that the process of adding nitrogen to cement posed unforeseen dangers.

In fact, this past December, BP attempted to place the blame and costs of the Gulf disaster on Halliburton, the oil services company that injected quick-dry cement into the well under the Deepwater Horizon. BP told a federal court that Halliburton concealed a computer model that would show that, under certain conditions, the cement could fail disastrously.

Following the Deepwater Horizon explosion, it became clear that nitrogen-laced mud can leave “channels” in the cement, allowing gas to escape and blow out the well-bore cap. However, that would have become clearer, and risks better assessed, had Halliburton and regulators known of the particulars of the Caspian blow-out.

We have also just learned that the cement casing itself appears to have cracked apart in the Caspian Sea. The sea, we were told, “was bubbling all around [from boiling methane]. You’re even scared to launch a life boat, it may sink.”

This exposed another problem with deepwater drilling. BP had promoted Blow-Out Preventers (BOPs) as a last line of defense in case of a blow-out. But if the casing shatters, the BOPs could be useless.

BP has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the story of the first blow-out, and for good reason:  If the company deliberately withheld the information that it knew “quick-dry” cement had failed yet continued to use it, the 11 deaths on its Gulf rig were not an unexpected accident but could be considered negligent homicide.

Kennedy told me, “This is a critical piece of information. The entire government is basing its policy on the assurances of this company that this process can be done safely and it never failed before. This is what they were telling everybody. Yet, the whole time they knew that this was a process that had failed disastrously in the Caspian Sea.”

Why haven’t these stories come out before? This week our witness explained that in Azerbaijan, “People disappear on a regular basis. It’s a police state.”

But even in the U.S. and Europe, BP and other industry workers are afraid to complain for fear their files will be marked “NRB,” for Not Required Back­­—which will end a workers’ offshore career. Jake Malloy, head of the Offshore Oil Workers Union, reached in Aberdeen, Scotland, independently confirmed statements of the whistleblowers. He noted that companies create an atmosphere of fear for one’s job with the “NRB” system and its latest variants, which discourage reports on safety problems.

BP refused an interview for this investigation, though the company responded to our written questions regarding the Caspian blow-out. Notably, the company does not deny that the blow-out occurred, nor even that it concealed the information from U.S. and UK regulators. Rather, the company says there was a “gas release”—a common and benign event, not a blow-out. As to the accusation of concealment, BP states:

While BP says it issued a press release at the time of the September 2008 Caspian blow-out, the company did not tell the whole truth as reported by workers and witnesses. The BP press release of that day admitted only that, “a gas leak was discovered in the area of” the platform when, in fact, it was an explosion of cement and methane, say our witnesses, “which engulfed the platform.”

BP later stated that all operations on the platform were suspended as a “precautionary measure,” suggesting a distant, natural leak. In fact, the workers themselves said that, like the workers on the Deepwater Horizon, they were one spark away from death, with frightened minutes to escape.

While BP called the evacuation a by-the-textbook procedure, in fact, said our witness, “It was total mayhem,” and that a lifeboat rammed a rescue ship in the chaos. U.S. government investigators in the Gulf cite BP’s confused and chaotic evacuation procedures for possibly adding to the Deepwater Horizon’s death toll. Information about the 2008 blow-out should have led to improved procedures and possibly could have saved lives.

More seriously, BP PLC’s official filing to the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission, which requires reporting of all “material” events in company operations, again talked about a “subsurface release,” concealing that the methane blew out through its drilling stack.

Both the safety of quick-dry cement (which some drillers won’t use) and deep water drilling itself were in contention before the April 20, 2010 Gulf blow-out. In fact, the U.S. Department of Interior was refusing BP, Chevron and Exxon the right to expand the area of their deep water drilling in the Gulf over safety questions.

However, BP and the industry conducted a successful lobbying campaign to expand deep water drilling. BP’s Vice-President for operations in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress in November 2009, five months before the Deepwater Horizon explosion that, “Releases from oil and gas operations are rare.” Rainey assured Congressmen that reliable “well control techniques” such as cement caps will prevent a deep water disaster. Rainey made no mention to Congress of the blow-out in the Caspian Sea which occurred a year before his testimony.

BP itself states that if not for Halliburton’s quick-dry cement failures, the Deepwater Horizon would never have blown out.  Halliburton defends itself by saying that BP’s methods created air channels in the cement that caused it to fail. Notably, BP’s court Motion states, “Halliburton has deprived the Court and parties of uniquely relevant evidence.” BP claims that hiding the information about problems with the cement caused the loss of lives.

Kennedy suggests that if Halliburton’s withholding evidence was deadly, so was BP’s concealment of the cement failure in the Caspian. Stefanie Penn Spear, editor of EcoWatch.org, says that BP’s hiding evidence ultimately led to, “The biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It entirely turned the Gulf Coast economy upside down and threatened—and continues to threaten—the health and livelihoods of the people in the Gulf region.”

How is it that a major oil disaster, a blow-out that shut down one of the world’s biggest oil fields and required the emergency evacuation of 211 rig workers could be covered up, hidden from U.S. regulators and Congress?

The answer:  pay-offs, threats, political muscle and the connivance of the Bush Administration’s State Department, Exxon and Chevron.

For that story, read Part 2 of Greg Palast’s investigation BP Covers up Blow-Out—Bush, Big Oil and WikiLeaks.

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Re-prints permitted with credit to EcoWatch.org and the author.

Greg Palast is the author of Vultures’ Picnic (Penguin 2011), which centers on his investigation of BP, bribery and corruption in the oil industry. Palast, whose reports are seen on BBC-TV and Britain’s Channel 4, will be providing investigative reports for EcoWatch.org.

You can read Vultures' Picnic, "Chapter 1: Goldfinger," or download it, at no charge: click here.

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The affiant police officer misled the issuing magistrate on the question of probable cause, and that nullified the good faith exception. United States v. Albury, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53645 (M.D. Fla. January 19, 2012):

Beginning with Leon, the Supreme Court "recalibrated" the cost-benefit analysis under the exclusionary rule "to focus the inquiry on the 'flagrancy of the police misconduct' at issue." Davis v. United States, __ U.S. __, 131 S.Ct. 2419, 2427 (2011). Thus, "[w]hen the police exhibit 'deliberate,' 'reckless,' or 'grossly negligent' disregard for Fourth Amendment rights, the deterrent value of exclusion is strong and tends to outweigh the resulting costs. But when the police act with an objectively 'reasonable good-faith belief' that their conduct is lawful, or when their conduct involves only simple, 'isolated' negligence, the 'deterrence rationale loses much of its force,' and exclusion 'cannot pay its way.'" Davis, 131 S.Ct. at 2427-28 (citations omitted)..

Here, Off. Waker acted with deliberate indifference to Defendant's Fourth Amendment rights in connection with his search of room 332. The affiant's plain-view sighting of suspected cocaine in that room is the fruit of that illegality. Even if the affiant's representations were not deliberately false on his part, in the circumstances of this case and given Blackwell's unrefuted testimony, they were made with reckless indifference of the truth and misleaded the state judge on the matter of probable cause. In the circumstances, the government may not claim the benefit of an exception to the exclusionary rule under Leon.

Uncorroborated anonymous tip did not provide reasonable suspicion. United States v. Melendez, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53663 (S.D. Fla. April 4, 2012).*

Civil case over search that led to revocation was not barred by Heck because the evidence was admissible, illegal search or not. Henderson v. Davis, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 7646 (11th Cir. April 17, 2012).*

Search warrant after controlled buy was not stale because the collective information showed a continuing operation. United States v. Tisdale, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53294 (D. Kan. April 16, 2012).*

“[A]ny ordinary visitor to Defendant's apartment would have understood Defendant's actions to constitute assent to Officer Jordan's entry into Defendant's apartment.” United States v. Murphy, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 52246 (E.D. Tenn. April 13, 2012).*

Defendant lived in the basement of Flynn’s house in St. Louis, and Flynn discovered a meth lab. Flynn called the police and consented to their entry and search. Defendant’s relationship to the basement was difficult and uncertain, so the court assumes standing, but more than one person stayed down there, and it wasn’t clear what his privacy relationship was to the basement. It seemed that it wasn’t sufficiently private that Flynn couldn’t consent. United States v. Hendrix, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53823 (E.D. Mo. March 30, 2012):

In the circumstances of this case, Officer Page and the other officers acted reasonably. When they arrived at 3232 California, they knocked on the front door and it was opened by a man who said he was Thomas Flynn who had phoned them earlier about a meth lab in his basement, operated by a friend of his. He then led the officers to the basement door, which was already open. Flynn had not asked anyone for permission to admit the officers into the residence nor to take the officers to the doorway leading to the basement stairs. His actions reasonably led the officers to believe that, like the woman in the doorway with the baby on her hip in Matlock, Flynn showed he belonged in the residence and had sufficient authority over it, including the basement area, to further authorize the police to enter not only the residence generally but also to go downstairs to investigate the possibly criminal activity about which he had called them. United States v. Almeida-Perez, 549 F.3d 1162, 1170-71 (8th Cir. 2008). The officers' entry into the basement room of defendant was constitutionally authorized by the consent of Thomas Flynn.

Inconsistencies in the officers’ testimony led the court to conclude that consent was not given after a knock-and-talk. United States v. Miranda-Cortez, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 53402 (D. Utah April 16, 2012)*:

Because of these inconsistencies and the government's failure to acknowledge or otherwise convincingly explain them, the court concludes that the testimony of the officers involved in this operation is not sufficient to sustain the government's burden to prove it had freely obtained consent to search the basement apartment. The court wants to be clear that it is not impugning the testimony of the officers. Nothing before the court suggests that the officers have intentionally attempted to mislead the court or give knowingly false testimony. Indeed, it is more likely that the officers were distracted by their roles in continuing their deception to gain access to the house and were so overly concentrated on finding the drugs once they entered the basement, that they failed to appreciate all the details of what was occurring.

The officers may well have concluded that they had sufficient evidence to proceed without a warrant. Uncertainty, however, must weigh in favor of the constitutional protections. A pretext pursued with the stated objective of gaining entrance without a warrant may prematurely lead officers to believe they have succeeded in obtaining sufficient concessions from the home occupant to claim it was consent. With no exigencies evident here to justify a departure from the constitutional requirement, the officers rely on the consent exception, which is cluttered with uncertainties and contradictions.

Defendant objected to the alleged consent given by the lady who opened the door and let the police in. That was essentially a moot argument because, once the police were inside, he said he owned the place, and he consented and cooperated with the police. All this happened before the officers saw any evidence of crime. “Mr. Lucas's consent to the officers' presence and search was sufficient to dissipate any taint caused by an illegal initial entry. See U.S. v. Jarvi, 537 F.3d 1256, 1260 (10th Cir. 2008).” United States v. Lucas, 2012 U.S. App. LEXIS 7746 (10th Cir. April 17, 2012).*

The state showed that the inventory search of defendant’s car was necessary to log the valuables, and defendant did not show that it was in bad faith, so he does not prevail. Boykin v. State, 2012 Ark. App. 274 (April 18, 2012).* [Note: Is the court shifting the burden of proof here? Should the state bare the burden of good faith inventory searches since they always carry the burden?]

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