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centralizers use stop collars that are separate components and slip onto the
centralizers. Because the April 15 OptiCem report predicted less channeling with
a total of 21 centralizers, the BP Macondo well team located 15 additional
centralizers from Weatherford, an oil‐field service company, and arranged for
them to be sent to the BP shore base in Houma, Louisiana, from which the
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centralizers would be flown to the rig.

A Weatherford representative, Daniel Oldfather, however, testified he
could not locate all the centralizer materials at the BP shore base. While the 15
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centralizers were at Houma, additional centralizer components, including stop‐
collars and epoxy were not available. Oldfather further testified that a BP
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representative told him that the additional components would be shipped to the
rig by boat. On April 16, Oldfather flew to the Deepwater Horizon with the 15
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centralizers and waited for the other centralizer components to arrive. When
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the 15 centralizers arrived on the rig, Brian Morel examined them and told John
Guide, the BP wells team leader, that the 15 centralizers did not have stop collars
on them but that they would have “plenty of time” for the stop collars to be
delivered to the rig. BP had planned to send the additional centralizer
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components by boat, which was to arrive the afternoon of April 16. By 10:00 p.m.
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on that date, the boat had not arrived. On the morning of April 17, Morel told
Oldfather that BP would run only the six centralizers with built‐in stop collars
that BP already had available on the rig. Oldfather testified that he never
determined whether the shipment with the additional centralizer components
arrived on the Deepwater Horizon.
113

Guide explained in an email and in his testimony before the JIT the
rationale for BP‘s decision to use only 6 centralizers rather than the 21
centralizers that been planned. According to Guide, BP believed based on its
previous experience that the 15 centralizers delivered to the rig, which had
separate stop collars that needed to be slipped onto the centralizers, might come
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apart and clog the wellbore. Finally, Guide noted that it would have taken an

106 Testimony of Daniel Oldfather, Joint Investigation Hearing, October 7, 2010, at 7.
107 Id.
108 Id. at 8‐9.
109 Id.
110 Id. at 9‐12.
111 BP‐HZN‐MBI000255668.
112 Oldfather testimony at 11‐12.
113 Id. at 12‐13.
114 Guide testimony, July 22, 2010 at 67‐68.

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