We were alerted to the validity of the permit for well A and well B, both 100 days shortly after our post on the revised permit for the 3rd well. If a BP engineer could be charged for deleting text messages, this is obviously a more serious charge.
BP ran foul of the law when they declared they drilled only well A.
As you can see the permit for well A ran out on July 24, 2009. By right they should have notified MMS and in their Well Activity Report (WAR) if they needed an extension beyond this 100 days period. Instead in the WAR, they merely stated that they were carrying by-passes from well-001 (which is well A). We have shown this to be technically impossible (ie. to drill from the same seabed location) after cutting the drill string (see previous articles by BK Lim).
In any case, drilling on well A alone was technically illegal after July 24, 2009 without an explicit well proposal and reasons. No well has actually been drilled beyond the 100 days period since the normal period is only 3 to 4 weeks at the most. At 100 days it means your well is already in serious trouble. That is the reason new proposals are needed to prevent any disaster (if it was a problem well) or illegal cover ups. If MMS did not take up on this matter then they are in serious trouble for colluding with the BP criminals. No two hoots about it.
You will also notice that well B was scheduled for drilling from April 15 to July 24, 2010. BP could not claim the 3rd well to be well B.
Although well B was approved for drilling, BP still needed to notify MMS. When the well blew up on April 20, 2010, BP and MMS realised that if someone were to bring up this issue, it was a sure confirmation they had run foul of the law and could be convicted on this alone. BP's "we have drilled only one well" story would also break down.
Their only way out was to file a Revised Application for a BYpass that did not specifically mention a new well with the coordinates all screwed up (not of well A, well B or the 3rd well either). But the give-away was the Proposed Well Location. A by-pass from the same well location do not have a new well location (elementary industrial knowledge).
For those who had always been meticulous on the dates, this Revised Application for a By-pass would appear to be legitimate. The rest of the falsified information can be attributed to careless mistakes at the time of filing due to the blowout or anxiety of fearing a blowout. Both are also wrong since filing the RA after the blowout had occurred would imply they knew they had done something legally wrong. If it was filed on April 15, 2010 (5 days before the blowout) it would also mean they knew the blowout was planned.
Although everyone is suspicious of this falsified Revised Application, no one dared to challenge the official story of 1 well as we have seen how Thad Daly (confirmed BP schill and probably had a huge interest in Halliburton) tried to dismiss this as a forgery. But why was this forgery filed with MMS? Why didn't MMS act on this forgery even before the disaster? Why would BP incriminate themselves by filing this forgery?
It is like getting into an accident and realising that driving license or insurance coverage had expired? In any accident, the first things to be checked would be the documentation. To give a superficial compliance with the law, BP submitted a half-baked RA with falsified information hoping no one would really check beyond the superficial details. Well, we did. BP, MMS and the investigators are now caught with their own lies and documented proofs that BP ran foul of safety regulations and legal laws of the land (& sea).
BP, MMS (the ones who approved the Revised Application) and the investigators should be very afraid of this documented proof of corruption, collusion in a planned disaster and cover up.