BP Requested Flurry of Design Approvals Up To Blast

Deepwater Horizon rig before explosionHopeTracker| Just a week before BP’s Gulf catastrophe, the company asked government regulators to approve three changes to the well design in about 24 hours, according to court records reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.  

The Minerals Management Services approved all changes quickly, in one case five minutes after submission. 

BP’s flurry of revisions and re-revisions stands out as uncommon. Of the more than 2,200 wells that have been drilled in the Gulf since 2004, only 5% have had multiple permit revisions submitted to MMS within one calendar day, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of MMS records. via WSJ