BP Atlantis: Another

Catastrophic Accident
Waiting to Happen?

Fact Sheet • October 2010

BP Atlantis Timeline
2007
October 2007 BP Atlantis begins production in the Gulf of Mexico.

2008
August 2008 August 15, 2008: Internal BP email reveals: “…[c]urrently there are hundreds if not thousands
of Subsea documents that have never been finalized…” for Atlantis and this could “cause a
catastrophic Operator error.”

2009
March 2009 March 4, 2009: Whistleblower Ken Abbott reports missing documents and safety issues to BP
Ombudsman Office.
March 2009: Whistleblower Ken Abbott notifies federal government of BP’s missing safety
documents, through the Minerals Management Service. Minerals Management Service takes no
immediate action.
May 2009 May 12, 2009: An independent engineer, Mr. Mike Sawyer, completes an evaluation of BP database.
He concludes that BP’s failure to maintain proper documents could lead to a catastrophic failure,
and recommends platform be shutdown until problems are fixed.
May 19, 2009: Whistleblower Ken Abbott again reports problems to the U.S. Department of the
Interior and Minerals Management Service. Minerals Management Service takes no immediate
action.
June 2009 June 2009: Whistleblower Ken Abbott seeks Food & Water Watch’s help in exposing the looming
threat of a BP Atlantis accident, in light of inaction by BP and MMS.
June 30, 2009: Minerals Management Service and BP have discussions about the matter and
the agency notifies BP as to what documents it is interested in reviewing. Almost a month later
Minerals Management Service receives documents from BP that are unrelated to the whistleblower’s
concerns.
July 2009 July 8, 2009: Food & Water Watch writes a letter to Minerals Management Service calling on the
agency to immediately shutdown the platform unless it can assure the platform is safe to operate.
Minerals Management Service takes no immediate action.
August 2009 August 2009: Food & Water Watch asks Members of Congress to look into the problems surrounding
BP Atlantis, and Minerals Management Service’s inaction.
September 2009 September 11, 2009: Food & Water Watch sends a letter to MMS requesting a meeting on Atlantis.
Minerals Management Service denies request.
October 2009 October 19, 2009: Food & Water Watch asks MMS through a FOIA request to quickly release
government documents related to BP Atlantis and the platform’s documentation problems.
October 30, 2009: MMS denies Food & Water Watch’s expedited FOIA request, indicating that the
documents are unimportant.
December 2009 December 16, 2009: Food & Water Watch sends a letter to BP asking whether it has all proper
documents for Atlantis.
 2010
January 2010 January 15, 2010: BP sends a letter to Members of Congress denying any problems with Atlantis,
saying that it only recently learned of the allegations by Food & Water Watch.
January 22, 2010: Food & Water Watch finally meets with Minerals Management Service, and
explains concerns with BP Atlantis. MMS refuses to discuss BP Atlantis and takes no immediate
action.
February 2010 February 8, 2010: Food & Water Watch sends a letter to Congress rebutting BP’s January 15th letter
and renewing the call for an investigation into BP Atlantis.
February 24, 2010: Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ) issues a letter to MMS signed by 18 of his
colleagues calling for an investigation of BP Atlantis and a report on the findings to be issued to
Congress.
March 2010 March 26, 2010: the Minerals Management Service writes a letter saying it will investigate BP
Atlantis and issue a report to Congress by the end of May.
April 2010 April 13, 2010: BP’s own Ombudsman Office informs the Whistleblower Ken Abbott that it had
actually investigated the allegations a year earlier when they were reported and that he was correct:
BP had not followed its own Project Execution Plan. Moreover, “[i]t was a challenge to the Project
and of concern to others who raised the concern before you worked there, while you were there,
and after you left.”
April 14, 2010: Food & Water Watch sends letter to Minerals Management Service outlining the
issues they should look into as part of their formal investigation, including the BP Ombudsman’s
2009 investigation.
April 20, 2010: BP Horizon explodes in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers, injuring many others
and spilling millions of gallons of oil into the ocean.
April 30, 2010: Food & Water Watch is informed by Minerals Management Service in a response to
a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, that the agency had not and would not take any steps
to investigate BP Atlantis.
May 2010 May 17, 2010: Food & Water Watch files suit in federal court.
May 19, 2010: Representative Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ) issues letter to MMS signed by 25 of his
colleagues demanding the agency to interview Ken Abbott, the whistleblower, before concluding its
investigation. The letter calls for an immediate shut-down until it can be shown that this platform is
operating safely.
May 27, 2010: Elizabeth Birnbaum, Director of Minerals Management Service, resigns amid charges
that she did not act fast enough to reform the ethically plagued agency and that she supervised an
agency that allowed BP to cut corners and disregard safety, two factors that may have contributed to
the Deepwater Horizon tragedy.
May 31, 2010: MMS Director of the Offshore and Minerals Management Program “retires.” Chris
Oynes oversaw oil and gas leasing in the Gulf for 12 years and has been involved in approving
numerous leases for BP.
June 2010 June 15, 2010: Michael Bromwich becomes the head of MMS
June 17, 2010: BP meddling halts FWW lawsuit against feds
June 17, 2010: Ken Abbott testifies before the Energy and Mineral Resources subcommittee that BP
Atlantis a “ticking time bomb.”
June 21, 2010: MMS changes its name to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and
Enforcement (BOEMRE).
June 24, 2010: FWW requests meeting with Michael Bromwich.
July 2010 July 15, 2010: Food & Water Watch sues the U.S. Department of Interior and BOEMRE for violating
the Freedom of Information Act by failing to respond to the organization’s request for information
on the government’s oversight of deepwater facilities such as BP Atlantis. The suit was later dropped
when BP intervened
July 21: FWW sends letter to EPA asking to debar BP from government contracts
July 21, 2010: Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) joins with 17 of her colleagues and sends a
letter to BOEMRE calling on the agency to halt Atlantis operations, pending a preliminary review
 of the whistleblower’s charges, an interview the whistleblower and a spot check of the engineering
documents in question. Representative Slaughter’s letter is the third Atlantis congressional letter sent
to MMS/BOEMRE. With the Slaughter letter, 35 members of Congress have called for an Atlantis
investigation, including some members who want Atlantis shut down until proven safe to operate.
July 22, 2010: During a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) accuses BOEMRE Director Michael Bromwich of not taking
BP Atlantis seriously and continuing to drag its feet on the matter. Representative Kucinich excoriates
Director Bromwich for his lack of leadership and knowledge on Atlantis. “I’m disappointed you
don’t have the answer to that, because that’s your job,” he said. ”Now I’m told that it should not
take that long to review the plans. That raises a question that the plans might not even exist. I’m
concerned that Atlantis is the rule, and not the exception… You understand the concern here. You
are dealing with a catastrophe from a lack of appropriate oversight of the Deepwater Horizon. A
lack of appropriate oversight also exists with respect to the BP Atlantis platform, which could have
even more catastrophic implications than the Deepwater Horizon.”
July 27, 2010: FWW submits comments to Obama’s oil spill commission
July 30, 2010: FWW requests to meet with Michael Bromwich continue to be ignored

August 2010 August 20, 2010: BOEMRE sends a letter to the Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources
subcommittee, Representative Jim Costa (D-CA), and Representative Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ),
informing them that a final report on the Atlantis investigation will not be issued until mid-October.
Initially, the investigation was to be completed in May, but after the Horizon tragedy, the completion
dates changed three times. Industry experts believe determining BP’s compliance with the law
should take only days to complete an investigation.
September 2010 September 8, 2010: BP releases report of its internal investigation into the accident on the
Deepwater Horizon rig.
September 10, 2010: FWW sues BP in federal district court. The suit alleges that BP continues
to endanger workers and the environment by operating Atlantis without thousands of engineer-
approved documents that are required before an oil platform can start production and begin making
royalties from federally leased lands.
September 2010: In an undated letter to Representatives Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ) and Jim Costa (D-
CA), BOEMRE responds to the representatives’ request to the agency for a copy of the certification
that BP was supposed to submit for design approval prior to production. The representatives also
asked for “an electronic version of the as-built drawings for BP Atlantis, together with the current
database and drawing log for the Atlantis that indicates the completion status of its engineering
documents.”
FWW performed an analysis of the documents that BP provided to BOEMRE and discovered the
following:
• Instead of supplying a copy of the certification statement that the company was supposed to
submit prior to production in 2007, BOEMRE turns over a letter from BP dated August 9, 2010
saying that it “hereby” certifies the design of the platform. The implication is that the agency
has not located an original certification. Instead, BOEMRE had to ask the company for it and
apparently thinks that this 2010 letter is sufficient, even though the certification was required to
be submitted prior to production, and evidence still suggests that the company does not have
up-to-date and engineer-approved documents.
• BP and BOEMRE cannot account for the vast majority of final, engineer-approved drawings for
Atlantis:
1. Subsea Engineering Documents: Representatives Grijalva and Costa requested all as-built
drawings for Atlantis; BP only turned over 412 total documents of the more than 7,000
that Abbott alleged were incomplete. More than half have not been certified as as-built,
meaning they are not final.
2. Trees: BP only provided 10 of the 570 that it should have. None of them were final. For
producing facilities, such as Atlantis, trees serve the same function that blow-out preventers
do for drilling facilities such as BP’s Deepwater Horizon.
3. Piping & Instrumentation Diagrams (P&IDs): The list of subsea P&IDs indicates that none
 were complete and final when the facility started production, even though they should
have been.
4. Atlantis Flowline/Riser Drawings: Of the 3,133 documents that should exist for this portion
of the platform, BP provided regulators with only 43 documents and none of them were
identified as as-built.
5. Topside Engineering Documents: Drawings were done by a collection of engineering firms
and it appears that most of them have no final BP as-built approval.

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