http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2012/04/bp_atlantis_whistleblower_alle_1.html
Times-Picayune
Published: Thursday, April 05, 2012, 11:42 AM Updated: Thursday, April 05, 2012, 11:46 AM
By David Hammer, The Times-Picayune
A whistleblower who has complained for years that BP didn’t maintain proper engineering documents aboard its Atlantis oil platform, in violation of federal regulations, has now additionally claimed that BP lied to the government about whether the design of most of the platform hull was ever approved by registered engineers. Whistleblower Kenneth Abbott has filed a motion for summary judgment against BP in federal court in Houston.
He argues that BP made false claims in 2002 when it certified to the federal Minerals Management Service that registered engineers had approved Atlantis’ design. Because of that, he contends that BP owes the U.S. the full value of the Atlantis oil field, which it leases from the federal government.
Abbott’s lawsuit garnered national attention in 2010, after BP’s nearby Macondo well blew out, killing 11 aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and starting the worst accidental offshore oil spill in history.
Abbott served as a BP contractor on Atlantis, a $2 billion oil-and-gas production rig 190 miles south of New Orleans, when he discovered the required documentation was missing. He reported to a BP ombudsman in 2009 that the rig didn’t maintain required “as-built” drawings of the systems and structures on the rig.
The ombudsman, retired federal Judge Stanley Sporkin, later substantiated Abbott’s complaints. Abbott’s latest filing quotes from Sporkin’s confidential report, which states that BP engineers grew “annoyed” at Abbott in December 2008 when he kept insisting that they follow the regulations and transfer as-built drawings to the platform.
A report last year by MMS’ successor agency, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, stated that the lack of as-built drawings onboard did not cause any immediate threat to safety. Abbott has argued otherwise in the lawsuit.
Abbott filed suit in 2009, contending the lack of drawings made operations unsafe, and against MMS for failing to enforce its regulations. The idea behind his case got a jolt when President Barack Obama said in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and Gulf oil spill that the MMS had a “cozy relationship” with the industry it was supposed to regulate.
The environmental group Food and Water Watch joined in Abbott’s lawsuit in Houston, which alleges violations of the False Claims Act.
Based on documents gathered during discovery for the case, Abbott claims that 95 percent of the “as-built” engineering drawings used to build the platform were never approved by licensed engineers. While BP sought and received a special approval from MMS to use unstamped designs from a Swedish firm, it never asked for such a waiver for the vast majority of the designs of major components by a Korean shipbuilding company.
Special thanks to Richard Charter