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By Kristen Hays
NEW ORLEANS, Feb 26 (Reuters) - After hearing claims that BPPlc put profits above safety in the first day of courttestimony over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, a seniorexecutive for the oil company insisted the blame should beshared.
Lamar McKay, BP's global head of exploration, production anddevelopment, said on Tuesday the company's role as designatedoperator on the doomed Macondo well did not mean it was the onlycompany at fault.
"The key point to me is it doesn't mean sole exclusive, itmeans shared responsibility," said McKay, called by plaintiffsin the federal civil trial in New Orleans centered on the spilland its aftermath.
Recently promoted from president of BP America, McKay is amember of the London-based company's executive committee,alongside Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley.
He was just the second witness for the plaintiffs, the U.S.Justice Department and coastal states, which are suing BP, rigowner Transocean Ltd and well cement providerHalliburton Co. The three companies have been lobbingaccusations at each other over the well blowout ever since ithappened on April 20, 2010.
McKay's testimony followed that of a noted forensicengineer, Bob Bea, who said BP had fostered a culture that putcost-cutting over safety before the accident.
"There is ample evidence of intense pressure within thesystem to save time and money," said Bea, co-founder of theCenter for Catastrophic Risk Management at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. "With stress and pressure come sacrificesto safety."
Bea consulted with a White House commission thatinvestigated the spill and prepared a report faulting BP for theplaintiffs in the case. He also had consulted with BP on riskmanagement prior to 2005.
He said BP cut its Gulf of Mexico costs by 22 percent from2008 to 2009 while increasing oil and gas output by 55 percent.
But on cross examination, BP lawyer Mike Brock pointed outthat in 2008 BP spent $205 million on work on its Thunder Horseand Atlantis oil and gas platforms, compared with $43 million in2009. The work on Thunder Horse meant output in 2008 was just afraction of its level the following year, Brock said.
Thunder Horse only began pumping oil and gas in mid-2008after a three-year delay to fix design flaws on the platform andrepair leaks to seabed equipment.
WALK THE TALK
While Bea agreed that public statements about safety from BPexecutives were positive, they were not enough on their own."The statement of the talk has to be backed up with effectivewalk," Bea said.
The April 2010 blowout at the Macondo well caused anexplosion that killed 11 men, sank a rig and spewed more than 4million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico.
Bea is well known in New Orleans, site of the trial, becausehe was a key witness in litigation over failed levees whenHurricane Katrina hit in 2005, flooding much of the city andleaving more than 1,800 people dead.
Bea conceded to Brock that, in the years leading up to theblowout, BP had invested in training programs and set asidebudgets to increase process safety - as the safe operations andhandling of hazardous materials are known.
The plaintiffs later sought to contrast BP's claims of asafety culture with its own acknowledgment internally that itworked in a risky business.
One of their lawyers, Robert Cunningham, presented McKaywith a document - labeled BP/Amoco - about other companies'disasters, including the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill inAlaska, that said those "organizations provide cultures thatinvite excessive risk taking, demand superhuman performance, ordevelop complacency that result only in reactive safetymanagement."
The document was used in Bea's report for the plaintiffsfinding fault with BP's safety practices, though McKay said hewas unfamiliar with it and did not know if it was authentic.
The non-jury trial before U.S. District Judge Carl Barber issplit into three phases, with the first focused on allocatingblame among the defendants and the severity of their negligence.
The case is In re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "DeepwaterHorizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010, No.10-md-02179, in the U.S. District Court, Eastern District ofLouisiana.
