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May 13, 2010

Report: Owner of Oil Rig Seeks to Limit Liability to $27M
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The Dow Jones Newswire is reporting that Transocean, the owner and
operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded and sank
last month, is seeking to limit its liability to just under $27 million.
The world’s biggest offshore driller is filing the request in the US
District Court in Houston under a century-and-a-half-old law originally
aimed at helping US ship owners compete with foreign-flagged vessels.
Transocean’s rig was being leased by BP at the time of the April 20th
explosion that killed eleven workers and caused the devastating oil
spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile, evidence emerged Wednesday that
the oil well failed a pressure test hours before the drilling rig
exploded. Pressure tests are conducted to ensure the integrity of cement
poured into the well to keep out natural gas. Congressman Henry Waxman
discussed the test findings at a congressional hearing Wednesday.

Henry Waxman: The anomalies in the pressure testing present a
significant question that should be thoroughly investigated. Just hours
before the explosion, tests on the well returned results that signaled a
possible well failure and the influx of gas up the wall. Yet it appears
that the companies did not suspend well operations, and now eleven
workers are dead and the Gulf Coast region faces catastrophic
environmental damages. We need to know if that’s the case and why it was
the case."



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