Pa. Gas Big Blowout Coverup: Missing Man Employed By Same Failed Macondo BOP Company

Deborah Dupré Exclusive for Before It’s News

A mystery man missing since Tuesday, who some officials say was onsite when Chevron’s Dunkard, Greene County frack well exploded into a massive gas fire, is an employee of the same company directly tied to the 2010 catastrophic BP Deepwater Horizon explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.

For four days, companies continue to withhold information about the missing employee, claiming this is due to it being “sensitive” and “delicate” information, according to officials. Identity of the man injured in Monday’s blast and who employed him is also “sensitive information.”

Cause of Tuesday’s blowout and the explosive gas fire, continuing to spew uncontrollably near Pennsylvania’s West Virginia border, “remains unknown,” reports say.  

One thing that is known is that Houston-based Cameron International, maker of blowout preventers (BOP), employed the missing worker. This author suspects Cameron also employed the injured worker, whose identity is also being withheld and thus, he remains quiet.

Corporate stories about disasters and related “sensitive information” must be well rehearsed before telling them to the public. Backroom deals must also be made, before public statements involving multiple companies’ disasters.

Cameron International has deep “sensisitve” ties to the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving millions poisoned without humanitarian aid. There, in 2010, Cameron International’s blowout preventer (BOP) was the center of attention – until it made a deal with BP.

“A low-profile Texan company specialising in esoteric equipment for the mining industry has been thrust into the spotlight over the Deepwater Horizon disaster as BP persistently points to a failed “blowout preventer” as a key factor behind the catastrophic spill in the Gulf of Mexico,” reported the Guardian.

Cameron International, a Houston-based 177-year-old US firm that employs 18,000 staff globally, made the blowout device that was supposed to be a ”failsafe” mechanism, “shearing through the doomed oil rig’s drilling pipe and slamming the well shut to prevent any gush of oil in the event of an emergency.”

Under questioning by a US congressional committee, BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, repeatedly cited the BOP when asked what caused Deepwater Horizon’s catastrophe. The 450-tonne piece of equipment was supposed to have an exceptionally high integrity rating with a failure rate of “one in a hundred thousand and one in a million,” he’d said, and that it was “clear” that the BOP design was “not as failsafe as we’d believed it to be.”

Cameron International’s BOP failed three times, Hayward testified: 1) It failed when staff on the rig tried to activate it, fearing a build-up of gas in the well. 2) It failed when the rig caught fire and was separated from its undersea drilling pipe when it was due to automatically kick in. 3) It failed when BP sent robots to try manually operating it.

As tight-lipped as today amid Chevron’s Dunkard, Pennsylvania well blowout, in 2011 when a Cameron spokesperson declined to comment on Hayward’s testimony. 

David Summers, a mining technology professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology, said blowout preventers were “ubiquitous” in the mining industry: “Virtually every well has one – when something goes wrong, that’s what you use.”

Is that what failed two Cameron employees in Chevron’s Greene County frack well, a BOP? Christian Science Monitor reporter Mark Clayton unearthed a 2009 reliability study finding BOP devices failed 62 times during three years of testing in the Gulf of Mexico. 

Sensitive Information

Pennsylvania’s Dunkard township fracking wild well, owned by Chevron, is about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh, in the Marcellus Shale region. The blowout, involving companies choosing to not call it a “blowout,” caused a huge gas fire, still burning out of control since the explosion early Tuesday morning, that reports first said began at 5:45 with 20 persons and were later changed to 6:45 with 19 workers. 

The state Department of Environmental Protection head was at Chevron and Cameron’s ground zero, the fracking wild well fire in Greene County on Thursday and said crews are making progress combating the blaze where one man remains missing and one was injured, both repeatedly referred to as “sensitive information.’

One part of the sensitive information is: “One worker who was on the scene during the Tuesday morning explosion is still missing. His identity has not been released,” according to reports since the event occurred through Friday morning, Feb. 14.

Not one worker on site was trained and equipped to manage a gas fire or explosion, according to multiple reports, this requiring another Houston-based Wild Well Control Company to fly to the site hours later to attempt to halt the disastrous gas fire at the well. Wild Well Control was also called to the Deepwater Horizon Macondo Well blowout scene where it was designated to cap the well, a dog and pony show, according to the late Matthew Simmons, confirmed by a landsurveyor soon after Simmons’ death. (Vampire of Macondo)

“Despite having one of the most active gas drilling fields in the country, there are no personnel trained or equipped to deal with gas well fires or explosions. Chevron has flown in Wild Well Control out of Texas to begin developing a plan to extinguish the blaze.

State Impact News reports:

DEP Secretary Chris Abruzzo says an accounting had been done at the well site Tuesday morning and that Chevron has reason to believe the worker was there at the time of the fire.”

This is obviously sensitive information and it’s obviously sensitive to the folks at Chevron and to the contractor,” Abruzzo says. “So we’re all just trying to be very delicate with the information.”

The Herald Standard reports:

 A worker missing from a natural gas well fire site in Greene County has been identified by a Texas company as one of its employees.

The worker’s name has not been released to the media. Cameron International is based in Houston and is a flow specialist company for gas wells.

“We don’t have any information about what caused the incident, but we are working with Chevron, state and local officials to locate our employee,” said Cameron International spokeswoman Sharon Sloan.

The Cameron International worker was one of 19 people working at the site at the time of the blast. http://

Initial reports about the fracking well explosion said there were 20 people working on the site at the time of the explosion. One report said 20 to 30 people were working on the site.

Chevron’s story about the explosion is here: 

Lee Ann Wainwright, a spokeswoman for Chevron, who leases the gas well on Water Tank Road, said the fire began at 6:45 a.m. Tuesday when an explosion rocked the Lanco 7H Marcellus shale well pad and resulted in a fire that continued through the night and into Wednesday.

The gas well is one of three situated at the site, and Wainwright said the well was “in the final stages of preparation before being placed into production” when the blast occurred.

… representatives from Chevron and Wild Well Control, gas well fire experts based in Texas with an office in Canonsburg, are working to develop a containment plan for the blaze, which will focus on cutting off the supply of natural gas.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with this family and with all of our employees, contractors and emergency responders,” Wainwright stated in the press release.

Wainwright said no drilling or hydraulic fracturing was occurring at the time of the blast Tuesday and that, at the time of the incident, crews were preparing to run a line of tubing at the site. She said such actions are routine in well preparations.

“Officials for one of the crews working at the site, Pacific Processing Systems of Houston, Texas, said all their employees were able to escape the blast and fire unharmed.

“One person for another company that was working at the location suffered minor injuries, according to state police Trooper Stefani Plume. That worker’s identity also has not been released.” (Author’s emphasis)

Cameron International

Cameron, with an $8+ billion in annual revenues, works with drilling contractors, oil and gas producers, pipeline operators, refiners and other process owners to control, direct, adjust, process, measure and compress pressures and flows, according to its website’s “About Us” page. Cameron is organized into the following divisions, according to its official website:

Drilling & Production Systems manufactures pressure control equipment and provides aftermarket services for worldwide onshore, offshore and subsea oil & gas drilling and production operations. Also provides system design and project management services for worldwide offshore oil and gas completion operations. Through their acquisition of LeTourneau Technologies drilling, power systems, and offshore divisions, they also manufacture drilling equipment including top drives, drawworks, rotary tables, and mud pumps, as well as designs and components for jackup rigs.

Valves & Measurement manufactures flow control equipment and provides aftermarket services for worldwide onshore, offshore and subsea oil & gas production, pipeline and process operations.

Measurement Systems designs, manufactures and distributes measurement, quality, and control instrumentation for the global oil & gas and process control industries.

Petreco Process Systems provides processing equipment and aftermarket services for worldwide onshore and offshore oil & gas production and refining operations.

Compression Systems manufactures compression equipment and provides aftermarket services for worldwide onshore and offshore gas production and transmission and for global process operations.

BP Deepwater Horizon Failed Blow Out Preventer Maker Same As Chevron’s Dunkard Green County BOP

Cameron International manufactured and sold to Transocean 2001 the blowout preventer (BOP) that failed to close the well head and stop the flow of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil well in the Gulf of Mexico.

News reports stated the equipment was not properly maintained by its operators and may have led to failure of the BOP system.(Hargreaves, Steve. Gulf of Mexico oil spill could cost BP $3 billion or more,  (Money.CNN.com.)

The following is adopted from Avoiding the Blowout, by John K. Borchardt, for Mechanical Engineering, August 2010.

In the drilling and extracting process, to maintain appropriate pressure and stop fluids from seeping into surrounding rock, a fluid made of barium sulfate-enhanced mud is added to the well bore. Once desired depths are reached, a casing wider in diameter than the drill pipe is lowered into the well. Next, cement slurry, containing additives to keep it from hardening as it goes down, is pumped into the annulus, space between the casing and rock, displacing the “muddy” drilling fluid.

After the annulus is filled, the cement is allowed to harden, and slurry is replaced with fluids containing dissolved calcium chloride salts with densities up to 11.6 pounds per gallon or bromide salts with densities of 11.5 to 19.2 pounds per gallon.

That cement creates a watertight seal between the oil- and gas-bearing rock and the well bore. To ensure that seal is tight, two, sometimes three, pressure tests are performed at two-hour intervals, and cement slurry is injected at high pressure to fill any detected leaks in the cement sheath.

For the final step, drillers position a cement plug. Operating personnel drill through that plug to allow the oil and gas flow into the wellbore when production begins.

Cameron International’s blowout preventer (BOP) failed to function. 

It appeared no major problems occurred during Macondo well’s drilling conducted by Transocean, Ltd., the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor. Two tests performed on the cement seal by Halliburton Services, the largest cementing services company, indicated it was tight.

A third test, however, provided anomalous results that Lamar McKay, president of BP America, later called “worrisome” during testimony to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. In those hearings, Steven Newman, president of rig owner Transocean, said tests indicated “something happening in the wellbore that shouldn’t be happening.”

Tim Probert, president of global business lines and chief health, safety, and environmental control officer for Halliburton, nevertheless testified that, after reviewing test results, BP, the final arbiter of all Macondo operations, decided to proceed, putting a 10-year-old, 450-ton Macondo blowout preventer to the ultimate test.

At the Macondo well blowout, just before Halliburton placed the final concrete plug, high pressure forced oil and gas into and up the wellbore. The blowout preventer valves and shear rams, designed to cut through and seal the drill pipe, failed. The blowout preventer failure allowed oil and gas to surge up to the rig floor and trigger the fatal explosion.

Escaped hydrocarbons created the massive oil leak that hit Louisiana’s coast in mid-May, and eventually tainted the whole of the Gulf and its residents, with help from Nalco’s Corexit that made the crude oil 52 times more toxic. Nalco was never held responsible – and neither was Cameron International.

David McWhorter, Cameron International’s vice president for engineering and quality control, spent several months “helping advise the forensic examiners hired by the government to inspect his company’s failed BOP.” Nevertheless, during a testimony before a federal investigative panel in Metairie in 2011, he said had major questions about those forensic findings.

Det Norske Veritas, Norwegian risk-management company hired in the investigation, concluded oil and gas shooting up a 5.5-inch drill pipe at extremely high pressures caused the pipe to bend, knocking it off-center in the middle of the BOP. Without a centered pipe, the device couldn’t use its powerful slicing rams to cut and seal the pipe shut.

The implication of those findings? The blowout preventer wasn’t designed by Cameron to handle such intense emergency conditions.

On April 8, 2011, in a congressional hearing, Cameron said it built the BOP to industry standards, but those standards never conceived of a bowed pipe, as it said might have happened in the DH blowout. Standardized tests of BOPs never included a check to see whether the rams could cut off-center pipe, according to the Times Picayune.

But under questioning, Det Norske Veritas officials acknowledged they had no physical evidence of the pipe bending and the elastic bowing of the pipe was simply a theory of what happened based on modeling. Seizing on that, McWhorter faulted the examiners for not presenting what he’d advised them for months and that he claimed could have gone wrong to prevent the BOP rams cutting properly — things that wouldn’t have required the pipe to bend and would have resulted from poor BOP maintenance by the rig owner, Transocean.

The Cameron executive questioned whether there could have been enough pressure to buckle the pipe, which by Det Norske Veritas’ own calculations, would have required an incredible 113,000 pounds per square inch of force.

McWhorter said examiners ignored the possibility that the critical blind shear rams didn’t work because there simply wasn’t enough power to get them to close fully. He said a normal level of 1,500 psi might have initially triggered the rams instead of the much higher triggering pressures that should have been employed in an emergency.

“If that happened, it would not have been enough force to cut the pipe (even if centered),” McWhorter said. “It’s possible then that the pipe was only dented, not sheared all the way through.”

He said hydraulic controls might also have simply “not been up to the game that day” and noted the “deadman” function, supposed to automatically close rams and disconnect the rig from the well when hydraulics, electricity and communications are all lost, can be manually armed or disarmed. He suggested it wouldn’t have worked if not armed when the blowout happened, but he didn’t know whether it was or was not.

No testimony or investigative findings indicated whether the “deadman” was armed on the Deepwater Horizon the tragic day in may 2010.

Investigators did find a solenoid valve, that helps trigger emergency closure of the BOP’s rams, worked only intermittently during later testing. 

In December 2011, Cameron agreed to pay a $250 million settlement to BP PLC to settle all claims related to the Deepwater Horizon. (Gelsi, Steve, “Cameron rises on BP settlement …”, MarketWatch, December 16, 2011 4:29 pm EST. Retrieved 2011-12-16, and Times Picayune, BP settles with maker of failed blowout preventer, Dec. 2011.

Cameron never admitted any responsibility in the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe that immediately killed 11 workers and left  up to 40 million people poisoned with oil and Corexit.  BP said it was “in their mutual best interests, and the agreement is not an admission of liability by either party.”

The companies dropped all claims against one another before the Gulf oil catastrophe federal trial began.

“Under the agreement, BP said Houston-based Cameron is no longer responsible for any additional cleanup costs related to the spill. But BP said the agreement does not cover civil, criminal and administrative fines and other penalties that might arise out of the court proceedings.” (Times Picayune)

“BP and Cameron pledged to ‘improve safety in the drilling industry’ and do more to improve blowout preventers.’”

Meanwhile, the process involving plugging the wild well blowout is to begin in southern Pennsylvania’s Greene County where the explosive gas fire still burns out of control.

Sources: The Guardian, Herald Standard,  Mechanical Engineering, Christian Science Monitor,  Times Picayune, Vampire of Macondo: Life, Crimes, Curses in South Louisiana on the Gulf of Blood That Powerful Forces Do Not Want You to Know

Copyright 2014 by Deborah Dupré