Gulf oil spill: Deepwater Horizon was ‘a well from hell,’ widow says

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

Workers had problems controlling the oil well underneath the Deepwater Horizon before the oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, the widow of a worker testified Thursday.

“From Day 1, he deemed this hole a well from hell,” said Natalie Roshto, the widow of Shane Roshto, who was a laborer aboard the floating oil rig and among the 11 crew members killed when it exploded April 20. “He said the earth, he said Mother Nature just doesn’t want to be drilled here.”

Speaking before a panel of investigators in suburban New Orleans on Thursday morning, Roshto said her husband told her by phone on the morning of the explosion that the crew was having problems controlling the well. He specifically mentioned kicks, in which potentially dangerous bubbles of natural gas would rise out of the well toward the rig. He also spoke of an extensive loss of mud. Mud circulates through the drilling pipe and helps control the well.

The mention of kicks is significant because investigators have suggested that a highly pressurized flow of natural gas shot out of the well onto the rig platform, eventually igniting in contact with the rig’s engines.

Natalie Roshto said her husband mentioned that the atmosphere aboard the rig was intense.

“It was a bit more high pressure than it had been in times before,” she said. “I think he felt the pressure because he knew they were behind.”

Shane Roshto was supposed to have returned home on April 21, the day after the rig exploded.

Before his death, Roshto attended a safety school in Houston run by Transocean, the owner of the rig, and the couple talked about how he felt good about the class and wanted to bring that culture of safety to his workplace.

He received a safety award in 2008 for spotting a dropped object at work and stopping a job. Natalie Roshto said her husband had never expressed concern about his safety on the job until he began work on the latest well being drilled by theDeepwater Horizon. The two talked about life insurance, the widow said, “because he knew his job was dangerous.”

Shane Roshto was aboard a year ago when flooding was reported on the rig. “He was actually in the room, in the compartment, that was taking on water,” Roshto said.

Natalie Roshto called the oil industry “vital to this country” and said she believed there were “enough safety rules.”

“Shane was satisfied with his job,” she said. He “planned on being out there the rest of his life.”

Natalie Rosho testified before a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Interior Department panel formed to determine the cause of the rig explosion, which caused the worst offshore oil spill in United States history.

[For the record at 9:58 a.m.: A previous version of this post said that Roshto said her husband had never expressed concern about his safety on the job until he began work on the Deepwater Horizon. Her husband never expressed concern about his safety on the job until the Deepwater Horizon, a floating mobile exploratory oil rig, arrived at its last well site, the one the rig had completed drilling shortly before it exploded.]

-- Rong-Gong Lin II in Kenner, La.