Survivors kept on boats for 15 hrs; dunned to sign releases

[RWebb]

latest reports - TransOcean kept survivors on boats for 15 hours; then took them to hotel rooms and away from their families

They then coerced the workers into signing releases and stmts. that they did not witness any accident. They kept them awake; did not let them sleep.

[Superman]

You must be mistaken. Corporations wouldn't do that. Money is not that important.

[EarlyPorsche]

Did I miss something? What happened exactly?

[Jagshund]

Quit spreading lies about corporate America before I brand you a socialist stooge. Where's the proof, I say? WHERE'S THE PROOF?!

[RWebb]

Originally Posted by EarlyPorsche

Did I miss something? What happened exactly?

dunno - that's all I heard on the radio - should be on the news later this pm

appears they have multiple affidavits & the docs they were forced to sign

[legion]

Please move to PARF where this belongs.

[RWebb]

it is neither political nor religious - I hope you and others will keep it that way - you too, Supe.

[idontknow]

from: NPR.org » Rig Survivors Felt Coerced To Sign Waivers

says: "Hours after they had been rescued, workers who survived an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico were asked to sign form letters about what they had seen and whether they had been injured.

Lawyers for the oil rig's owner, Transocean, requested that workers who had survived the blast sign the form in the wake of the April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon. This was hours before the workers had been allowed to see their families.

Now some of those survivors say they were coerced and that the forms are being used against them as they file lawsuits seeking compensation for psychiatric problems and other injuries from the blast.

"The form that they made them sign had, 'I was here when it happened, I didn't see anything.' Or 'I saw this and I was or was not hurt,' " says Steven Gordon, a Houston attorney who represents some of the survivors.

It's a pre-printed form letter. The surviving rig worker was asked to fill in the date, his name and address and where he was at the time the evacuation was ordered."

[cmccuist]

Sounds like BP was looking to protect themselves against the inevitable onslaught of sharks. And by sharks I mean lawyers. I'm betting that the sharks will make sure everyone is treated fairly. And by treated fairly, I mean they will score huge and everyone else will get screwed.

[Por_sha911]

Oh well, NPR. Now there's an politically unbiased media source.

[idontknow]

It was the only news source I found with a keyword search

next time I'll add unbiased to the keywords

[Noah930]

If the story is even half true re: coercion, wouldn't it be pretty easy for plaintiffs' attorneys to get this thrown out of court? "Legal" documents signed under duress are often considered worthless in the medical field, for example.

[Joeaksa]

Not going to stand up in court for a minute. They were under duress...

[RWebb]

yes, those things will either get tossed out completely, or at best, get a jury instruction to give them low wt.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

These are oilmen for chrissakes. They're not exactly marshmallows. Yes, they'd been through an ordeal and had been emotionally compromised, but I'd like to know who exactly was going to stop a room full of burly oil rig guys from saying "fk you, I'm leaving to go find a phone and call my family" and leaving.

Yes I think there was serious coercion here, but I also don't think we're hearing the entire story.

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by cmccuist

Sounds like BP was looking to protect themselves against the inevitable onslaught of sharks. And by sharks I mean lawyers. I'm betting that the sharks will make sure everyone is treated fairly. And by treated fairly, I mean they will score huge and everyone else will get screwed.

would be kinda my take on it as well.

[Zeke]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

These are oilmen for chrissakes. They're not exactly marshmallows. Yes, they'd been through an ordeal and had been emotionally compromised, but I'd like to know who exactly was going to stop a room full of burly oil rig guys from saying "fk you, I'm leaving to go find a phone and call my family" and leaving.

Yes I think there was serious coercion here, but I also don't think we're hearing the entire story.

"burly oil rig guys" ?? You mean the ones sitting at the console? The galley chef?

That's certainly stereotyping if I've ever read it.

[lane912]

the "burly" ones were probably among the casualty's

[cbush]

> Good description of what happened - from an interview....
>
>
> This well had been giving some problems all the way down and was a big
> discovery. Big pressure, 16ppg+ mud weight. They ran a long string of 7"
> production casing - not a liner, the confusion arising from the fact
> that all casing strings on a floating rig are run on drill pipe and
> hung off on the wellhead on the sea floor, like a "liner". They
> cemented this casing with lightweight cement containing nitrogen
> because they were having lost circulation in between the well kicking all the way down.
>
>
>
>
> The calculations and the execution of this kind of a cement job are
> complex, in order that you neither let the well flow from too little
> hydrostatic pressure nor break it down and lose the fluid and cement
> from too much hydrostatic. But you gotta believe BP had 8 or 10 of
> their best double and triple checking everything.
>
>
>
>
> On the outside of the top joint of casing is a seal assembly -
> "packoff" - that sets inside the subsea wellhead and seals. This was set and tested to
> 10,000 psi, OK. Remember they are doing all this from the surface 5,000
> feet away. The technology is fascinating, like going to the moon or
> fishing out the Russian sub, or killing all the fires in Kuwait in 14
> months instead of 5 years. We never have had an accident like this
> before so hubris, the folie d'grandeur, sort of takes over. BP were
> the leaders in all this stretching the envelope all over the world in deep water.
>
>
>
>
> This was the end of the well until testing was to begin at a later
> time, so a temporary "bridge plug" was run in on drill pipe to set
> somewhere near the top of the well below 5,000 ft. This is the second
> barrier, you always have to have 2, and the casing was the first one. It is not know if this was
> actually set or not. At the same time they took the 16+ ppg mud out of the
> riser and replaced it with sea water so that they could pull the
> riser, lay it down, and move off.
>
>
>
>
> When they did this, they of course took away all the hydrostatic on
> the well. But this was OK, normal, since the well was plugged both on
> the inside with the casing and on the outside with the tested packoff.
> But something turned loose all of a sudden, and the conventional
> wisdom would be the packoff on the outside of the casing.
>
>
>
>
> Gas and oil rushed up the riser; there was little wind, and a gas
> cloud got all over the rig. When the main inductions of the engines
> got a whiff, they ran away and exploded. Blew them right off the rig.
> This set everything on fire. A similar explosion in the mud pit / mud
> pump room blew the mud pumps overboard. Another in the mud sack
> storage room, sited most unfortunately right next to the living
> quarters, took out all the interior walls where everyone was hanging out having - I am not making this up - a party to
> celebrate 7 years of accident free work on this rig. 7 BP bigwigs were
> there visiting from town.
>
>
>
>
> In this sense they were lucky that the only ones lost were the 9 rig
> crew on the rig floor and 2 mud engineers down on the pits. The
> furniture and walls trapped some and broke some bones but they all
> managed to get in the lifeboats with assistance from the others.
>
>
>
>
> The safety shut ins on the BOP were tripped but it is not clear why
> they did not work. This system has 4 way redundancy; 2 separate
> hydraulic systems and 2 separate electric systems should be able to
> operate any of the functions on the stack. They are tested every 14
> days, all of them. (there is also a stab on the stack so that an ROV
> can plug in and operate it, but now it is too late because things are damaged).
>
>
>
>
> The well is flowing through the BOP stack, probably around the outside
> of the 7" casing. As reported elsewhere, none of the "rams", those
> being the valves that are suppose to close around the drill pipe and /
> or shear it right in two and seal on the open hole, are sealing. Up
> the riser and out some holes in it where it is kinked. A little is
> coming out of the drill pipe too which is sticking out of the top of the riser and laid out on the
> ocean floor. The volumes as reported by the media are not correct but who
> knows exactly how much is coming?
>
>
>
>
> 2 relief wells will be drilled but it will take at least 60 days to
> kill it that way. There is a "deep sea intervention vessel" on the
> way, I don't know if that means a submarine or not, one would think
> this is too deep for subs, and it will have special cutting tools to
> try to cut off the very bottom of the riser on top of the BOP. The
> area is remarkably free from debris. The rig "Enterprise" is standing
> by with another BOP stack and a special connector to set down on top of the original one and then close.
> You saw this sort of thing in Red Adair movies and in Kuwait, a new
> stack dangling from a crane is just dropped down on the well after all
> the junk is removed. But that is not 5,000 ft underwater.
>
>
>
>
> One unknown is if they get a new stack on it and close it, will the
> ***** broach around the outside of all the casing??
>
>
>
>
> In order for a disaster of this magnitude to happen, more than one
> thing has to go wrong, or fail. First, a ****ty cement job. The
> wellhead packoff / seal assembly, while designed to hold the pressure,
> is just a backup. And finally, the ability to close the well in with the BOP somehow went away.
>
>
>
>
> A bad deal for the industry, for sure. Forget about California and
> Florida. Normal operations in the Gulf will be overregulated like the N.
> Sea. And so on.