BP's Well Control Exec was Unprepared for U.S. Gulf Blowout

The company's lawyers also sought to reject a central argument made by plaintiffs - which include the U.S. government, Gulf states and former contractors Transocean and Halliburton Co - that BP's estimates of the size of the leak were unsubstantiated and complicated efforts to control the well.

Internal company emails presented at the trial have shown BP saying publicly that 5,000 barrels of oil a day were leaking into the ocean when it knew up to 100,000 barrels a day could have been leaking.

Dupree said his team was nearly sure at one point that an early capping attempt known as a "top kill" was working - only to be dealt a stinging setback when they realized the well was still gushing.

"We thought we had killed the well...There was a celebration in the room," he said.

After the failure of the top kill, which pumped heavyweight drilling mud into the well and then put junk material on top of it, BP became concerned that too much weight would cause the well to breach.

That prompted them to scrap another option, known as "BOP on BOP," that would have put a blowout preventer on top of a similar device.

Plaintiffs have suggested "BOP on BOP" would have ended the leak sooner than the capping stack BP finally installed.


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