Mike Williams

as of April 20 of 2010 what was your employment I was employed by a Transocean as a chief electronics technician and how long had you been in that position up to that time got less than one year right let's go through your history when did you come on board the Deepwater Horizon for the first time July of oh I if I recall correctly did you work on any other rigs after you came on board in July 2008 no sir I did not let's walk through the responsibilities of the position you had as of April 20th the chief electronics engineer you just tell me a little bit about the responsibilities that your position required of you that's a very broad question as I've explained in the past I worked on everything from the prop to the top that had a wire and a signal sending to a computer or a database basically we were responsible for it okay did you work on any of the bo-peep panels I worked on the bo-peep urge panel yes sir I did do you happen to know if that purge panel remained in the automatic setting that you placed it in as up to April 20th the last time that I was called for that panel it had gone down someone had left the back door open to the driller Shack to long the driller shack itself is also a purged environment someone had stood with the back door open too long they'd lost purge in that room the alarm for the driller was received at his station and at the same time someone had opened the doors to the BLP control panel which it's designed to leak some air out you can't have it can't be a completely sealed environment because if you pressurize a vessel it becomes dangerous so that when they open the doors with a lack of positive pressure in the shack and the lack of now seals from the glass doors the BLP panel did power itself down was setting in automatic was the setting changed after that or did it remain in automatic my part of that issue was they called me the assistant driller Don Clark called me in my office said that the panel was dead I needed to get up the red floor immediately by the time I had arrived at the rig floor mark a senior subsea supervisor had had beaten me up there apparently he was called as well and he had flipped the key switch from automatic to manual the panel powered itself back up did you have any discussion about what why it was placed in that setting at that time yes I did with the BP company man that was present okay and you know the name of the company at that time yes I do it was mr. Donald muttering well just describe this conversation for me he asked I asked mr. Bergeron if he would like me to place that panel back in automatic at that time mr. hay reported that the entire fleet runs them in bypassed leave it the hell alone you mentioned some of the other systems that you work with and I believe you said safety systems did I hear you correctly Gessler what would be encompassed within the safety systems category of firing gas system ESD systems all the iacs integrated automatic control systems pa GA which would be our loudspeaker system anything associated with those respect to the firing gas system does that does that system work in conjunction with any other safety systems it does it works in conjunction with the iacs which is the integrated automatic control system there are several pieces of the Simrad safety system that that are comprised up of a firing gas and ESD vessel control thruster control there it's a very large series of subsystems that all report back to a central system how about the the emergency shutdown systems as I have any interaction with the firing gas system yes or does it is in the cause-and-effect matrix okay if fire gas is detected on the rig of what is the response of the emergency shutdown system it depends on where the gas or fire is located and depending on what mode the outputs of those sensors are placed in what are the different modes that the sensors could be placed in there are off the top of my head at least four modes there's a just your normal active mode there would be a passive mode there would be an inhibited mode and then it will also be an override mode what happens in active mode an active mode the the sensors data is used by the entire ICS system and would follow the flowchart of the cause and effect matrix would the emergency shutdown system automatically activate the dampers and closed off Airways if it's set in automatic in active mode but in some instances yes okay are you aware of where the firing gas sensors are located with respect to any air intakes near the engine room everyone gunner good all right where was preventative maintenance on the rig something that was generally behind schedule continuously behind schedule prior to April 20th were you on Deepwater Horizon when on the Macondo well when the rig took a kick yes I what what were you working on when that happened but we were having issues with the with the chairs we say you're working on the chairs where where were the chairs in the driller Shack the cyber chairs a B and C - C are in the driller Shack working on the chairs what specific work were you doing um they were having issues with a software locking up and they what we turned our coin the blue screen of death where the driller would would be looking at - to monitor side by side looking at all of his parameters and all of a sudden just the screens will turn blue and he would lose all of his data so that had happened and you had been called to the drillers Shack is that correct yes no more stunts and as of April 20 2010 did you feel as though you did have a good understanding of how the safety system works I was comfortable and the maintaining and repairing of that system is I appreciate the system and I know you'll correct me if I say this wrong the system was capable of automatically making certain things happen correct integrated automatic integrated automated control system yes and one of the things that it was capable of automatically making automatically happen was pact evasion of I think I've seen the term panel alarm correct and that's that's a that's an alarm it's located on a panel you know in a control room correct and that's it that's an audible alarm beep beep beep correct and then the system was also capable of automatically sounding the general alarm on the rig correct and it was also capable of automatically closing fire dampers correct so the idea is come y'all are drilling a well and and there's gas down hole right correct okay and that gas is combustible gas sometimes well sometimes it's toxic okay could be could be either toxic or combustible right and you don't want a combustible gas to come into contact with an ignition source correct and that's one of the things a safety system on the horizon is designed to prevent correct and and the automatic closing of air dampers on intake locations is designed to prevent combustible gas from coming into contact with ignition sources it's correct that that automatic closing of the fire damper that's a part of the firing gas safety system correct now the system the safety system was also capable of automatically stopping ventilation fans correct it would shut down any pumps any equipment that's operating in that space that's using electricity it would shut all of that down whatever zone engine room number three is then as long as era two guests sensors detecting high high levels within that zone all the air dampers nets they are going to close correct and theoretically that should prevent gas from getting to whatever is inside engine room number three correct and that requires that the system that sensors be set in the active mode correct and in your it's your belief as the chief electrical technician electronics technician you're going to be going to catch me too on the horizon that the the gas sensors apart from maintenance activities should always be in the active mode correct now another thing that will happen when you have this to these two high high levels of sensors in a particular zone activated is the general alarm will sound correct if you're in the active mode correct okay and another thing that will happen is the panel alarms will sound correct and the visual banner or whatever it is associated with with the panels will will light up correct alright now I had you ever seen that situations where gas detection sensors were in a mode that you I think you used to turn be inhibited before is one of the options correct you've seen you've seen the in your time on the Deepwater Horizon had you seen gas detection sensors put in the inhibited mode the outside plan put in evident okay and had you seen the inhibited mode used a separate and apart from maintenance activities yes the standard way the Transocean kept the general alarm on the rig was in the inhibited mode correct so any reason to think that on April 20 2010 it was in something other than the inhibited mode no before and again you you strongly disagreed with that practice of translation used of keeping with a general alarm in the inhibited mode initially F and am I correct that the reasons you were given to do that was that they kept it inhibited mode because they didn't want to wake people up at night with false alarms correct they listed their justifications and one of them was they didn't want a big wake people up at night it's correct now one of the one of the reasons that Transocean gave you for inhibiting that automatic activation was that the control stations were manned correct now a man by whom DP DP operators a DP oh and a senior DP o are always on Tower so then the system when inhibited relies on the DPO or for just the assistant dpo dpor senior duplicate when inhibited the system relies on the EPO or the senior DPO being in the vicinity of aware of the panel alarm going off all right and in fact you never heard a general alarm they tire night no I do not and when you got outside did you see any visual light column alarms for the combustible gas I looked at at least two different light standards and neither one of them were blinking and of course the general alarm wouldn't sound and the lights the light alarms wouldn't activate automatically because or if the fire and gas system alarms was inhibited to correct and it's your belief that the system was inhibited death well you know it was I had no reason to believe they'd ever taken it out I think you said you're next managed to get you to get to the bridge a major way to the bridge after you left your shop right yes sir all right and then in the bridge you encountered the captain I did his name is Captain Cooper I call him captain Cartman all right I've seen where you described the captain as having a deer in the headlights look if he did that be accurate yes wouldn't what do you mean by that description he was overwhelmed I've also seen I think you said he was dazed and confused if that be accurate death he didn't know what was happening in why while you were on the horizon while they were drilling at the Macondo did you hear from conversations you had with any of the Transocean crew the Macondo being referred to as a well from how death tell me about those how did you hear about that term a lot of the conditions of that well were similar to the conditions of the previous well we had drilled which was in the vicinity of Devil's Tower that well exhibited a lot of the same nasty habits it had a lot of gas in it we got stuck it happened without issues we did not receive a whoop well bonus from the one near Devil's Tower nor were we going to receive a well bonus from this well the other well was dubbed the well from hell this became the new well from hell okay was the previous well from hell that was I'm sorry Devil's Tower it was close to Devil's Tower I don't know the exact blocker or name of it that well was was that well successfully completed no with abandoned

Channel: Michael Robinson

Views: 61,874

Rating: 4.8723402 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: Fd5KXZw1K9w

Length: 16min 26sec (986 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2013