WASHINGTON — The tricky process of sealing an offshore oil well with cement — suspected as a major contributor to the Gulf of Mexico disaster — has failed dozens of times in the past, according to an Associated Press investigation.
Yet federal regulators give drillers a free hand in this crucial safety step — another example of lax regulation regarding events leading up to the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Federal regulators don’t regulate what type of cement is used, leaving it up to oil and gas companies. The drillers are urged to simply follow guidelines of the American Petroleum Institute, an industry trade group.
Far more stringent federal and state standards and controls exist on cement work for roads, bridges and buildings.
While the chain of failures on Deepwater Horizon is under investigation, rig owner Transocean has singled out cement work as one likely fundamental cause of the blowout.
Even before Transocean pointed to cementing, independent experts suspected it partly because faulty cement work — either badly mixed or poorly placed against well walls — is so prevalent at offshore wells.
An Associated Press review of federal accident and incident reports on offshore wells shows that the cementing process has been implicated at least 34 times since 1978.
Many of the reports, available from the U.S. Minerals Management Service that regulates offshore wells, identify the cause simply as “poor cement job.”
“Unfortunately, this is yet another crisis in a long line of accidents caused by cementing problems in drilling,” said U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., a member of the Energy Committee looking into the cause of the blowout.
MMS refused to answer specific questions about its cementing policies. The Associated Press
