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departed the Deepwater Horizon prior to the negative tests. Jimmy Harrell was
the offshore installation manager and was the senior Transocean representative
on duty at the time of the blowout. Miles Ezell, the senior toolpusher, was
attending a meeting with visiting executives and assigned Jason Anderson, an
assistant toolpusher, to oversee the temporary abandonment work. The Panel
found no evidence that Harrell, Ezell or Kaluza were on the rig floor during
temporary abandonment operations on the evening of April 20.

The rig crew complicated its well monitoring efforts by displacing mud to
two active pits (pits 9 and 10) instead of one. This decision left the rig crew
unable to accurately monitor well outflow because when fluid is moved
throughout the surface system (to other equipment tanks, filling/draining surface
lines, general semi‐submersible rig movement, etc.), subtle gains or losses in the
trip tanks or pits are more difficult to accurately monitor.

Cathleenia Willis, a Sperry‐Sun mudlogger, described the rig activity as
follows:

They [the rig crew] were getting prepared to displace and discussed the
program. At the safety meeting they said they would displace back to the
boat. AD [Assistant Driller] said they would call her because she said she
could not monitor displacement back to the boat. When Joe [Keith] came
on tower he said he needed to talk to them about displacing to the boat
and he was not happy with this.

[Willis] told Joe Keith in handover what was happening and he was not
happy about displacement to the boat.
251

They [rig crew] were filling and dumping the trip tanks between 4:00 p.m.
and 6:00 p.m. At 628 strokes AD told her to zero out the strokes, this was
during the trip tank transfers. She got the strokes from the choke and kill
line and AD said it was okay to zero out the stroke counter.
252

Transocean’s policy, as stated in its Well Control Manual, Section 1.2.2.1,
requires “whenever possible, [to] limit circulation to a single active pit. Strictly

251 “Handover” in this context typically refers to the transfer of responsibilities from one person to
another.
252 BP‐HZN‐MBI00129630.

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