Excerpts from Houston Post:

Truitt Crawford, a roustabout for Transocean, told Coast Guard officials in a written statement about pressure to shorten time- "I heard upper management talking, saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs." (the plugs would sit inside the bottom of a long section of pipe that was supposed to serve as the conduit for oil and gas to the surface when the well started producing).
"The final stretch of pipe that ran from the wellhead just under the seafloor all the way into the oil reservoir was cemented in place at the very bottom. The cement barrier, however, only went several hundred feet up and did not reach the next section of larger pipe above it. This meant that there was no secondary barrier between the reservoir and the wellhead, so if any gas leaked through the cement it would have an unobstructed path all the way to the surface."
"A secondary barrier isn't required in federal well design standards, ........but taking the time and spending the money to install one would have provided another level of safety."
"The final section of the production casing was supposed to be centered in the well bore- the area carved out of the earth by the drill bits- by special brackets known as centralizers, but it was discovered that 15 of the centralizers were not the ideal design for the job.
"Rather than wait fot the right type of centralizers, the decision was made to use just the six on hand that worked."
"BP also decided not to run a final, time-consuming test on the cement job- a cement bond log- in which a device is lowered into the well thaat uses sonic signals to determine how well the cement has adhered to the pipe."
Oil field services firm Slumberger was hired to provide a variety of services and had a crew on standby........ The team, however, was not called on for the bond log so they left the rig the morning of April 20, according to Slumberger."

"Steve Tink, BP's health and safety team leader for drilling and completion in the Gulf of Mexico, said the company's drive to control the massive cost of drilling a deepwater well is not in conflict with promoting safe operations." !!