This is pretty damning stuff:
Halliburton knew weeks before the fatal explosion of the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that the cement mixture they planned to use to seal the bottom of the well was unstable but still went ahead with the job, the presidential commission investigating the accident said on Thursday.
In the first official finding of responsibility for the blowout, which killed 11 workers and led to the largest offshore oil spill in American history, the commission staff determined that Halliburton had conducted three laboratory tests that indicated that the cement mixture did not meet industry standards.
The result of at least one of those tests was given on March 8 to BP, which failed to act upon it, the panel’s lead investigator, Fred H. Bartlit Jr., said in a letter delivered to the commissioners on Thursday.
Another Halliburton cement test, carried out about a week before the blowout of the well on April 20, also found the mixture to be unstable, yet those findings were never sent to BP, Mr. Bartlit found.
IN decades, it will be interesting to look back and see how historians are treating this era, and I would not be surprised if they find that in corporate America, at least, the era was marked by a general indifference to anything other than immediate profits. It is amazing how in virtually every industry, from Enron to underwriters to ratings agencies to the banksters and on, quality control and integrity have been replaced with general indifference for the outcomes. Are those bonds really crap? Fuck it, AAA- someone else’s problem. Will they be able to afford that mortgage? Ah screw it, after I get my commission, someone else’s problem. Does this cement really work? Ehh, fuck it. Just do it and it will be someone else’s problem. it really is amazing when you see the rot across the board in every industry, and something to keep in mind for those of us with companies racing to drill the Marcellus shale for natural gas.