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The West Atlas Oil Spill
The massive fire that engulfed the West Atlas rig last week after workers tried to plug an oil leak. Photo: supplied
An oil driller has told an inquiry into Australia's worst offshore oil spill that PTTEP managers continually changed the drilling program to save time and cut corners.
Driller David Horne, from Liverpool, was on the West Atlas rig in the Montara oilfield in the Timor Sea when a faulty concrete pour was made down the well in March last year, six months before a blowout.
The faulty pour and the lack of a pressure cap that should have been on the well have been highlighted during the inquiry as causes of the blowout.
WAtoday.com.au first reported last November that poor decision making and corporate greed were behind the cause of the spill.
PTTEP Australasia's H1 well, off the northern coast of Western Australia, started leaking oil on August 21 before it was plugged on November 1.
The rig caught fire and burned at temperatures of 350 degC for two days before the well was plugged.
Under questioning by counsel assisting the inquiry Tom Howe QC, Mr Horne agreed he had said in a document prepared by Atlas that regular changes to the program were made, most of which were to save two to three minutes and cut corners.
When asked by Mr Howe if he could recall the sorts of changes made, Mr Horne said: "We'd get set up on doing a job, and we have all the safety paperwork in place, and then we'd get a phone call or they'd come up and they'd changed the program again, which would cut out a few other things, and the program gets changed, sometimes three or four times through that period."
Mr Horne said he could not think of any other instances that gave him the impression corners were being cut.
But he told the inquiry changes were made without official paperwork as a forward plan.
He said the managers making the changes were the "company men" from PTTEP.
AAP
