Report: Oil Worker Spotted Leak Weeks Before Explosion

(June 21) -- An oil worker who survived the Deepwater Horizon explosion has claimed that he found a fault in a key piece of safety equipment weeks before the disaster, according to a British television report.

Tyrone Benton told the BBC's Panorama program -- due to be broadcast tonight -- that he had spotted a leak on the rig's most crucial piece of safety equipment, the blowout preventer. That device uses a pair of giant shears to cut off and seal the well's main pipe if an accident occurs. However, several weeks before the April 20 blast that killed 11 people, Benton said a problem was identified with the blowout preventer's control pod, which contains the electronics and hydraulics used to operate the system.

Benton said that his supervisor e-mailed BP and the rig's owner, Transocean, about the leak, and that the faulty part was switched off rather than repaired.

"We saw a leak on the pod, so by seeing the leak we informed the company men," Benton told the BBC, according to a clip on the broadcaster's website. "They have a control room where they could turn off that pod and turn on the other one, so that they don't have to stop production."

Professor Tad Patzek, a drilling expert at the University of Texas, described the companies' decision as "unacceptable."

"If you see any evidence of the blowout preventer not functioning properly, you should fix it by whatever means possible," Patzek told the program.

Benton said that he didn't know whether the leaky pod was fixed or turned back on before the explosion. Repairing the control pod would have meant stopping drilling work on the rig, which was costing BP $500,000 a day to operate. BP has said that responsibility for blowout preventer maintenance lay with rig owner Transocean. In turn, Transocean said it had successfully tested the device before the April 20 blast.

Following the explosion, BP sent robot submarines to the seabed to try to activate the blowout preventer, but failed. The company told a congressional committee investigating the accident that the undersea bots discovered a leak in the safety device's hydraulic systems, and so couldn't generate enough force to cut through the pipe.

Last week, BP CEO Tony Hayward repeatedly identified the blowout preventer as a major cause of the accident, saying it was "clear" it was "not as failsafe as we'd believed it to be."

The revelations pile yet more pressure on BP, which has so far spent $2 billion dealing with the disaster and is currently battling with one of the well's co-owners -- Anadarko Petroleum Corp. -- over how the bill should be split. Anadarko, which has a 25 percent stake in the well, is refusing to pay its share of the cleanup, saying that BP was guilty of "gross negligence" or "willful misconduct" over the way exploratory drilling was carried out.

BP countered Anadarko's claims, saying in a statement issued Friday that "all the co-owners of the leasehold" had agreed to "share the costs of operations, including the cost to clean up any spill ... according to their respective ownership interests."

And Hayward is also facing new calls to stand down after he was photographed this weekend at a yacht race off the southern coast of England. Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., dubbed Hayward's involvement in the event -- which took place a day after BP said Hayward was stepping back from day-to-day management of the Gulf of Mexico cleanup -- "the height of stupidity."

"I believe myself that he should go," Shelby told CBS' "Face the Nation." "I don't know how he can represent a company in crisis like BP and ignore what's going on in the Gulf of Mexico."

BP spokesman Robert Wine told The Associated Press that Hayward's boating trip was his first break in two months, and that the CEO was just "spending a few hours with his family at a weekend. I'm sure that everyone would understand that."