BP Engineer Called Gulf Rig a ‘Nightmare Well’

Internal documents released Monday reveal a host of problems that plagued the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which exploded in late April, resulting in the worst oil disaster in American history. Documents made public by the House Energy and Commerce Committee show that BP took significant cost-cutting measures in the days leading up to the rig's explosion, prompting one of its engineers, Brian Morel, to refer to the Deepwater Horizon in an email as a "nightmare well." Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Bart Stupak (D-MI) wrote a letter to BP Chief Executive Tony Hayward citing five questionable decisions the energy giant made before the rig's explosion: "The common feature of these five decisions is that they posed a tradeoff between cost and well safety," it read. Hayward will come before Stupak's subcommittee on Thursday, in his first face-off with a congressional committee since the explosion.