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By Kathy Finn
NEW ORLEANS, Oct 2 (Reuters) - BP's manager in chargeof controlling the Macondo blowout in 2010 was never trained topermanently plug a ruptured oil well and said in court onWednesday the British company was not fully prepared for theworst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
On day three of the second phase of a federal trial in NewOrleans over the accident in the Gulf of Mexico, BP's JamesDupree also said "yes" when asked if the company was "startingfrom scratch" when it scrambled to stop the leak.
The U.S. District Court trial could lead to fines of morethan $17 billion.
BP lawyer Mike Brock sought to show the company was aswell-prepared for the leak as any other firm. He also emphasizedthat equipment needed to cap the well was not readily availablein the industry at the time.
The plugging approach that eventually worked after millionsof barrels of oil leaked over 87 days, a "capping stack," tookweeks to build. Capping stacks have since become crucial piecesof equipment standing by for emergencies in the Gulf as thegovernment has tightened safety and environmental standards.
"I had no formal training in well-kill operations," Dupreetold the court, referring to the operation of plugging a well.He called the blowout an unprecedented worst-case scenario. "Wedidn't have the equipment to attack a Macondo-type event, that'swhy we had to engineer so many things on the fly."
"We didn't have the preparations we have today," he said.
The company's lawyers also sought to reject a centralargument made by plaintiffs - which include the U.S. government,Gulf states and former contractors Transocean andHalliburton Co - that BP's estimates of the size of theleak were unsubstantiated and complicated efforts to control thewell.
Internal company emails presented at the trial have shown BPsaying publicly that 5,000 barrels of oil a day were leakinginto the ocean when it knew up to 100,000 barrels a day couldhave been leaking.
Dupree said his team was nearly sure at one point that anearly capping attempt known as a "top kill" was working - onlyto be dealt a stinging setback when they realized the well wasstill gushing.
"We thought we had killed the well...There was a celebrationin the room," he said.
After the failure of the top kill, which pumped heavyweightdrilling mud into the well and then put junk material on top ofit, BP became concerned that too much weight would cause thewell to breach.
That prompted them to scrap another option, known as "BOP onBOP," that would have put a blowout preventer on top of asimilar device.
Plaintiffs have suggested "BOP on BOP" would have ended theleak sooner than the capping stack BP finally installed.
Dupree said safety was a concern when responding to theblowout that killed 11 men.
"I'm really proud of my team," Dupree said. "We executed allthose operations and nobody else got hurt," he told the court.
BP's team stressed that the company's actions during thespill response were coordinated with the approval of governmentofficials and that many of its team members were trained tocontrol wells.
Asked if BP was prepared, Lars Herbst, a top regulator forthe Gulf, said he believed the company was "prepared toinitially respond" to the blowout and later on "technology andprocedures were developed to address that situation."
FINES HANG IN BALANCE
This phase of the trial, expected to last a month, covershow much oil spewed from the well and whether efforts to stop itwere adequate.
In the costliest scenario, the fines under the Clean WaterAct could top $17 billion - an amount beyond the $42 billion BPhas set aside for clean-up, compensation and damages.
The company has shed about $39 billion in assets to covermost of its provisions. But damages could rise and BP shareshave lost a third of their value since the disaster, partlybecause of uncertainty over future fines.
The first phase of the trial, which wrapped up in April,looked at dividing blame among BP and its contractors;Transocean owned the drilling rig and Halliburton did cementwork on the well.
The U.S. government says 4.9 million barrels were spilled,while BP says 3.26 million barrels leaked. Both those totalsinclude 810,000 barrels that were collected during clean-up thatthe judge has agreed to exclude.
Under the Clean Water Act, negligence can be punished with amaximum fine of $1,100 for each barrel of oil spilled; a grossnegligence verdict carries a potential $4,300 per barrel fine.
If the court judged the spill to have been 4.09 millionbarrels - the government's estimate less oil recovered - theprice of negligence could reach $4.5 billion. Gross negligencecould run to $17.6 billion.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier has said he will not assignpenalties for BP until the third phase of the trial, expectedearly next year.
The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "DeepwaterHorizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, U.S. DistrictCourt, Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 10-md-02179.
