BP oil rig's fire alarm was switched off 'so workers could get a good night's sleep'



Chief electrician testifies that he had alerted superiors to fire alarm 'wreck'



BP to start deep-water drilling off the coast of Libya 'within weeks'

China suffers its largest ever oil spill after pipeline explodes

The fire alarm aboard the BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico was partly disabled the night it was set ablaze and destroyed.

Michael Williams , the chief electrician on board the Deepwater Horizon, said the system that automatically sounded a general alarm was partially turned off because rig bosses 'did not want people woken up at 3am with false alarms'.

Mr Williams, who worked for Transocean, which owned the rig, said he had reported concerns to superiors that the fire alarm system was a 'wreck' which he was unable to repair because equipment malfunctioned.

Testimony: The fire alarm aboard the Deepwater Horizon was partially disabled on the night it was set ablaze, according to the oil rig's chief electrician

The claims come as a looming tropical storm has forced dozens of ships to leave the site of the leak, heightening fears over the safety of the newly capped well.

BP engineers said they would leave the leaky cap fixed to the crippled well head closed as Tropical Storm Bonnie forced the state of Louisiana to declare a state of emergency.



Bonnie, which gathered strength over the Bahamas and will enter the Gulf of Mexico this weekend, could delay by another 12 days the push to plug the broken well for good using mud and cement, BP officials admitted.

Despite environmental concerns following the spill, it has emerged BP is to begin water-drilling off Libya 'within weeks'.

At a depth of 1,700metres, the new site in the Gulf of Sirte will be 200metres deeper than the Gulf of Mexico well, reports the Financial Times.

The news comes at a time when BP comes under increased scrutiny over a £585million deal to acquire gas and oil fields off the Libyan coast in 2007.



U.S. politicians have attacked the agreement after the oil giant revealed it had lobbied the former Labour government over a prisoner transfer agreement between Britain and Libya.

Incoming: Tropical Storm Bonnie powers through the Bahamas and is currently on course to hit the BP oil spill site in the Gulf of Mexico

The hearing into the Deepwater Horizon disaster being conducted by the US Coast Guard and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement in Kenner near New Orleans in Louisiana yesterday listened to Mr Williams give evidence.

His appearance capped a week of testimony from company officials involved in the rig, which exploded on April 20 and sank two days later, killing 11 crewmen and sparking the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

The Transocean-owned rig was drilling a well a mile beneath the Gulf under contract for BP.

However, written statements from several rig personnel taken by U.S. investigators refer to alarms sounding on the rig.



'At time of incident, I was in engine control room working on nightly log,' wrote Douglas Brown, the rig's chief mechanic. 'At which (sic) multiple gas alarms went off.'

'The general alarm configuration on the Deepwater Horizon was intentional and conforms to accepted maritime practices,' Transocean said in a statement.

The rig 'had hundreds of individual fire and gas alarms, all of which were tested, in good condition, not bypassed and monitored from the bridge.'