Report: Oil Well Documentation Problems May Be Contributing to Cleanup Woes

Bad documentation and faulty as-built record keeping may be behind the continuing problems with British Petroleum’s inability to stop the oil flow at its Gulf of Mexico disaster site.

The McClatchy news service is reporting that bad documentation on the as-built state of its Gulf of Mexico (GoM) oil wells may be a contributing factor in the continued failed attempts by British Petroleum (BP) to stop the leak.

The report’s lead: “BP engineers tried to activate a huge piece of underwater safety equipment but failed because the device had been so altered that diagrams BP got from the equipment’s owner didn’t match the supposedly failsafe device’s configuration, congressional investigators said Wednesday.”