BP Crew Delayed in Raising Blowout Preventer

(AP)  BP crews faced delays Saturday as they slowly raised the 300-ton blowout preventer that failed to stop oil from spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, taking care not to damage or drop a key piece of evidence in the spill investigation.

The device was about 500 feet from the surface and likely wouldn't be hoisted onto the deck of the Helix Q4000 vessel until about 7 p.m. EDT, said BP PLC spokesman Neil Chapman. Darin Hilton, the vessel's captain, said crews have to wait for icy hydrates to melt off the contraption before it can be brought aboard.

FBI agents are on board waiting to take possession of the device - a key piece of evidence in the investigation into the Gulf oil spill - after its mile-long journey. It will eventually be taken to a NASA facility in Michoud, La., to be analyzed.

Special Section: Disaster in the Gulf

The 50-foot device was detached from the wellhead Friday afternoon. Another blowout preventer had successfully been placed on the blown-out well, the government said later.

The April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon killed 11 workers and led to 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP's undersea well.

Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.

But they don't know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don't know why the blowout preventer didn't seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to. While the device didn't close - or may have closed partially - hearings have produced no clear picture of why it didn't plug the well.

Lawyers will be watching closely, as hundreds of lawsuits have been filed over the oil spill. Future liabilities faced by a number of corporations could be riding on what the analysis of the blowout preventer shows.

The raising of the blowout preventer followed Thursday's removal of a temporary cap that stopped oil from gushing into the Gulf in mid-July. No more oil was expected to leak into the sea, but crews were standing by with collection vessels just in case.

The government wanted to replace the failed blowout preventer first to deal with any pressure that is caused when a relief well BP has been drilling intersects the blown-out well.

Once that intersection occurs sometime after Labor Day, BP is expected to use mud and cement to plug the blown-out well for good from the bottom.

[credibility_problem]

Whenever they call the FBI into a major corporate crime investigation these days, it means a cover-up is in the works.

Why have the FBI take possession? They screwed up the anthrax case, claiming it was a "lone wolf" instead of looking into the U.S. biological threat assessment program and the associated pharmaceutical firms. They screwed up the nuclear weapons espionage case involving Wen Ho Lee, ignoring the private contractor failures in favor of going after yet another "person of interest."

It's likely they'll come up with the "lone wolf" operator error scenario to explain away BP's radical cost-cutting approach to offshore production, one even other companies viewed as unsafe, isn't it? That's all the FBI can see - "lone wolfs" unless they're out to promote eco-terrorism conspiracy theories and the like...

If the FBI wasn't incompetent, from the top down, they would have caught the 9/11 hijackers well before they carried out their evil deed. As it was, they then topped that off by allowing the 9/18 - 10/9 anthrax mailer to escape scot-free (no, it wasn't Hatfill or Ivins).

Their institution is a bad joke - corporate apologists who can't even track down hijackers, despite multiple warnings from flight school instructors - how pathetic is that? The only organization with less credibility is the CIA (or the Rumsfeld-era DIA).

I'm sick of it.

[waterflaws]

"BP crews faced delays Saturday as they slowly raised the 300-ton blowout preventer...taking care not to damage or drop a key piece of evidence in the spill investigation."

Does it make sense to let the accused handle/produce the evidence? We certainly have two different sets of standards/laws for Large Corporations/The Rich and the rest of us corpoREAL citizens (subjects).

[LibertarianOH]

It makes perfect sense! Our government is full of non-oceanographer / non-oil industry specialist incompetent people, with absolutely NO knowledge, experience or equipment to do this...

BP, who is under a Federally Ordered microscope is... who better???? They have a vested interest to get this behind them, which in the end...
they probably will, considering a couple low-level platform managers made some bad cost-effective decision, that it will be proved out in the end caused this mess in the first place... not the big, bad foreign corporation they work for!

There is nothing wrong with letting the experts do the job, (in fact... it's a must-do) that they have been ordered to do and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Idiots), are there to make sure they do it!

Let the pros do their job... nobody is trying to hide anything at this point, considering there is a government ordered 24/7 video of everything that is and has been happening as shown to the world for months, happening, and there are our finest federal enforcers there to make sure they do just that.

THERE ARE double standards at play here, but not what you are espousing!

BP's 'US Government Ordered Job' is to bring the evidence up from the bottom of the ocean, and immediately turn it over to FBI officials... that's all!

Take your idiotic anti-corporate hypothesis and put it where the sun don't shine!

Idiot!

TCG-L