Impeachment? Eric Holder's Next Big Problem

Remember President Obama dispatching attorney General Eric Holder to be the enforcer during the BP oil spill. The kind of guy who would “kick ass”, or in Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s phrase keep a “boot on the throat” of BP? Well it seems there is a little tiff developing in federal court in New Orleans between BP and the left’s favorite bête noir Halliburton. The Wall Street Journal reports

BP’s alleging that Halliburton co. destroyed evidence in the weeks following the Deepwater Horizon explosion in 2010 that demonstrated that the cement formula the firm used on the drilling operation was flawed. The claim, made Monday in a federal civil-court filing in New Orleans, is the latest in a continuing volley of accusations between the companies as they face potentially huge civil and criminal penalties stemming from the 2010 accident in the Gulf of Mexico that killed a total of 11 people and led to the largest offshore oil spill in the U.S. history.
Halliburton has previously said that it believes the cement mix it recommended that BP use on the well was stable. It has argued that the well failed because of poor engineering and design choices made by BP.

Destruction of evidence, Oh My!!! Reading through the article you will discover that BP is alleging that Halliburton destroyed test samples meant to replicate the exact mixture of the cement used in the ill-fated Macondo well. This would seem to be the perfect opportunity for a grown-up to intercede. And the logical candidate would be Attorney General Holder as he is supposed to have in his possession the fragments of the actual cement used in the shoe track of the well. Those fragments ended up on the deck of the support vessel, the Damon Bankston, which played such a critical role in the rescue of the crew of the Deepwater Horizon, fragments of the actual failed cement job from a total depth of 18,000 feet, below one mile of ocean and two and one half miles of solid rock! What a key piece of evidence that must be!

Now one is inclined to marvel at the “target rich” environment Mr. Holder finds himself in. But, like a confused bluefin tuna approaching a shoal of baitfish, will he become confused, decide to lead from behind and go hungry? (As an aside the WSJ also reports that the bluefin tuna population survived the spill).

As AT’s publisher Thomas Lifson asked me, wouldn’t this seem to be a heaven sent opportunity for Eric Holder to add Halliburton to the demonization list of evil corporations? While at first glance that might seem to be the case, but the test results proving that the mixture of cement and nitrogen was a little “thin” is confirmation of the observations that I made in my August 4, 2011 blog post here on AT.

Given that the chief counsel to the president's commission on the oil spill agrees that the blowout occurred through the cement in the shoe track, it is unacceptable that no administration official has yet commented on what the commission's own researchers have discovered. Here's the link to the Halliburton experts on nitrified cement who state in their last paragraph "Typically, only 2 1/2 to 5 % of gas by volume is required downhole to produce enough compressibility to help prevent gas entry into the cement column." Per Halliburton's OptiCem program, Macondo was allegedly
going to suffer "severe gas flow potential" at 19% gas by volume!
Even a novice ought to be able to imagine what the consistency of the cement would be with about four times too much gas in the mixture!

Oh the humanity!!! All those $1000 per hour litigators, government regulators, mainstream media reporters and other elitists failed to find a problem that is obvious to a fifth grader. And they do not like to lose when playing Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?