A former Schlumberger employee who used to be responsible for the company’s response to oil rig blowouts around the world says that whoever ordered the team of engineers off the Deepwater Horizon before they recorded the results of a “cement bond log” test is directly responsible for the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the wrongful deaths of 11 people.

“The buck stops at the [Schlumberger] board of directors,” David Hawkins told The Examiner, which at the time of the explosion included former Clinton deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick, who is now representing BP.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune quoted Schlumberger spokesman Stephen Harris as saying: “’BP never asked the Schlumberger crew to perform the acoustic test and sent its members back to Louisiana on a regularly scheduled helicopter flight at 11 a.m.”

Less than 12 hours later, a massive natural gas explosion killed 11 crewmembers and sent millions of gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The cement bond log test uses an acoustic device lowered into the oil pipe casing that creates a visual record of the surrounding cement. Hawkins says the test is used “100 percent” of the time to determine a well’s stability. “The dog is not barking. Who’s responsible for pulling the crew off?” he asked.

Hawkins said he resigned from Schlumberger in the 1980’s after the company stopped promoting people with oil industry experience to its top management ranks and started “parachuting in” hedge fund managers, attorneys and accountants to run the company instead.