BP Workers’ Refusal to Talk Warrants Penalty.
Prosecutors in the massive BP/Deepwater Horizon blowout case say the refusal of three of the upper-echelon BP employees connected to the Deepwater Horizon rig should be forced to testify, under threat of penalty for their present silence.
Mark Hafle, BP’s senior drilling engineer; Brian Morel, a drilling engineer; and Robert Kaluza, the well-site leader, have refused to testify...on the grounds that it may incriminate them.
Federal officials have asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to rule that BP can be penalized at trial for the workers’ silence, citing the three employees’ refusal to answer specific questions about why they allegedly ignored warning signs and continued to drill and complete the well in violation of industry safety standards and government regulations.
In a pretrial deposition, Kaluza - who was on the rig - was grilled as to why no action was taken, when tests showed there could be serious problems.
“It was the well site leader and drilling engineer’s responsibility to ensure that the proper tests were completed before the cement was run, correct?” a lawyer asked Kaluza under oath. “You could not simply rely on the contractor, could you?”
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“You never ran any additional tests to determine the casing integrity or whether, in fact, something had ruptured higher up, did you?” the lawyer asked, saying that Kaluza had expressed concern about a possible rupture or hole.
Kaluza declined to answer the questions.
In asking that the court draw "adverse inferences" centered on the workers' refusal to answer certain questions, the point is to impress upon Judge Barbier (since the case is being heard without a jury) that the workers' truthful answers would be unfavorable to BP, and their silence is a refusal to implicate their company in willful negligence, hence the need to force their testimony.
BP said in a filing that it would rather the judge not penalize any of the companies involved in the spill for their employees’ refusal to testify.
“The inferences sought by other parties essentially amounted to counsel’s wish list of facts not otherwise established by the evidence,” Don Haycraft, BP’s lawyer, said in the filing. Drawing adverse inferences from employees’ silence, he said, would “improperly grant opposing counsel carte blanche to establish whatever facts they wished with regard to the events that led to the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon and resulting oil spill.”
And our old friend Donald Vidrine, the BP official on duty at the time of the explosion, continues to refuse to answer questions, citing health concerns, but not his constitutional right against self- incrimination. The government has not mentioned Vidrine in this most recent filing.
Prosecutors also asked the judge to draw adverse inferences against 11 other drilling personnel associated with the Deepwater Horizon, who worked either for Transocean, or for Halliburton and its Sperry-Sun drilling measurement unit, who were providing cementing services to the well.
In counterarguments, Transocean maintains that BP rig chiefs ignored negative pressure tests regarding the Halliburton cementing job on the drilling structure.
“These witnesses had substantial responsibility at BP over the Macondo well,” Transocean said in the filing. The unanswered questions “relate to these witnesses’ mishandling of cementing decisions on behalf of BP and to their mishandling of the negative pressure test on April 20, 2010.”
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Halliburton also asked the judge yesterday for adverse inferences against seven witnesses it claims “increased the risk of a blowout occurring” by disregarding danger signs and deviating from standard drilling procedures. These included the three BP employees and four Transocean employees who were working onboard the Deepwater Horizon at the time of the blast.
The three-way arguments and blame games among BP, Transocean, and Halliburton will most likely continue until the (non-jury) trial, which is set to begin January 14th before U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.
Make everybody...and I mean EVERYBODY...testify. (I'm looking at you too, Tony H.)
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