Employees and experts testified that in the hours before the explosion, they witnessed a power struggle over that decision � the kind of argument common among the different parties that lease and run complicated offshore drilling operations, but one that this time, had deadly consequences. One employee who worked for the rig owner, Transocean, was so mad after the fight that he warned they'd be relying on the rig's blowout preventer if they proceeded the way BP wanted. "He pretty much grumbled, 'Well, I guess that's what we have those pinchers for,'" the rig's chief mechanic, Doug Brown, said of Jimmy Harrell, the top Transocean official on the rig. "Pinchers" was likely Harrell's reference to the shear rams in the blowout preventers, the final means of stopping an explosion. Blame appears to be shifting in BP's direction from the drilling operator.