Contractor says activity on busy rig obscured key data

Workers on the Deepwater Horizon had difficulty monitoring key data during a critical time, in the final hour before the rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, because so many activities were happening at once, a contractor says. Data presented by John Gisclair, a support services coordinator for a unit of Halliburton, to a federal panel investigating the April 20 disaster shows there was a sharp rise in pressure that was later followed by a sharp drop in pressure. Gisclair says that could have been an indicator that something was wrong. But Gisclair says one of his workers on the rig told him later that there were so many simultaneous activities—starting with the displacing of mud to the pumping of fluids overboard—it was difficult to see what was going on. The company Gisclair works for had sensors on the Deepwater Horizon that were helping collect real-time data from the rig, which could be viewed by workers on the rig and managers on shore. In particular, there were technicians known as mud loggers who use an assortment of electronic instruments to monitor the mud system for possible indications of hydrocarbons. The testimony was part of the joint U.S. Coast Guard-Bureau of Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement investigative panel’s fifth session of hearings aimed at determining the cause of the explosion and how regulation, safety and oversight can be improved.