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Damning BP memo: Safety too costly

WASHINGTON — BP took measures to cut costs in the weeks before the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe as it dealt with one problem after another — prompting one of its engineers to describe the doomed rig as a “nightmare well,” according to internal documents released yesterday.

Brian Morel e-mailed that assessment on April 14, six days before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 workers and sparking the nation’s worst environmental disaster.

The dozens of documents made public by the House Energy and Commerce Committee include a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward from Reps. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) and Bart Stupak (D-Mich.). It lists at least five questionable pre-explosion decisions by BP.

“The common feature . . . is that they posed a tradeoff between cost and well safety,” write Waxman and Stupak, who respectively chair the energy panel and an oversight subcommittee.

The letter — supplemented by 61 footnotes — outlines questions Hayward may get before Stupak’s panel on Thursday.

It also notes that BP had a choice of two ways to cap the flow of gas and that, despite warnings from its own engineers, “chose the more risky casing option, apparently because the liner option would have cost $7 million to $10 million more.”

BP did not return calls for comment.