Chapter 14
Them Problems vs You Problems
On the evening of April 20, 2010, engineers on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig ran a negative pressure test on the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico. The test was designed to verify that the cement barrier at the bottom of the well was holding back the oil and gas reservoir, thirteen thousand feet below the sea floor. The pressure readings were anomalous: the drill pipe showed zero pressure, as expected, but the kill line showed fourteen hundred pounds per square inch, which should have been impossible if the cement was intact. The engineers debated the results for over an hour.
BP’s well site leaders asked whether the test had passed. The engineers on the rig could not reconcile the conflicting ...
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