Gulf oil spill: Rig’s chief engineer was unaware of problems before explosion

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig’s chief engineer was unaware that there was any problem until he heard the first explosion while in his bedroom, according to testimony Monday at a federal fact-finding hearing.

Stephen Bertone, the chief engineer on the Deepwater Horizon and an employee of Transocean, the rig’s owner, said at a joint hearing of the U.S. Coast Guard and a division of the U.S. Department of Interior outside New Orleans that he had spent the afternoon of April 20 giving a tour of the rig to BP employees and, afterward, went to his stateroom, got into bed and opened a book. Bertone said he heard two explosions with seconds.

“With each thump, I actually felt the rig shake,” Bertone said.

He said the emergency lights immediately went out — indicating that none of the power backup systems that could have been used to fight the fire were working. Bertone said the communications system also was out. At one point, he said, he ran to the standby generator — a critical piece of equipment designed to automatically bring power to the rig in case the regular engines, as well as the emergency generators, failed. But he was unable to get that generator working.

In later testimony, Bertone said, to his knowledge, the oil rig had never shut down the regular engines and emergency generators to see if the standby generator would turn on by itself following a complete power outage. Bertone said that, at one point, hours before the explosion, he noticed that there were double the number of people in a room overseeing the drilling, which he said indicated that there was something wrong.

Bertone, however, was asked to continue giving BP employees a tour. He said he did not check in later to see what the discussion was about.

“There was no hint or sign there was any other issue. I never asked, ‘Hey, what was going on?’ By the time I got back from the walk-around, everything was relaxed. I figured it was just some minor issue,” Bertone said.

-- Rong-Gong Lin II and Julie Cart in Kenner, La.