Roughly a year and a half before its 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster, British Petroleum had a close call with a gas leak in the Caspian Sea, off the coast of Azerbaijan, according to alleged US embassy cables released by Wikileaks via The Guardian.
The September 17, 2008 leak, some 100 kilometers east of the Azerbaijani capital Baku, prompted the evacuation of all 211 workers from the affected platform, "the largest such emergency evacuation in BP history," the cable reads. The leak was followed by a blowout on a gas re-injection well, "expelling water, mud and gas," the document goes on to say.
“BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent gas ignition,” reads another alleged cable.
The subsequent shutdown of the Central Azeri platform and other structures in the giant Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli cost Azerbaijan up to $50 million per day, as oil output slumped by at least 500,000 barrels per day, according to the cables.
BP later blamed “a bad cement job” for the leak. BP also claimed that a “bad cement job” by contractor Halliburton was to blame for its April 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
Giorgi Lomsadze is a journalist based in Tbilisi, and author of Tamada Tales.
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