In a videotaped deposition, Paul Maslin, BP's technology vice president for refining, said he disagreed with BP when it called for a 25 percent budget cut throughout the company in 1999. At the time, Maslin was working at BP's Coryton Refinery in Essex, England.

"I said I was unable to do that at Coryton. I did not think it was a sensible, safe thing to do," said Coryton, who added he was essentially demoted after he spoke up.

But Patrick Gower, who is BP's refining vice president for the U.S. region but was working at the Texas City refinery in 1999, told jurors the cuts forced the plant to reduce spending on such things as meals for staff, janitorial services and landscaping around the facility.

Brent Coon, an attorney for the four workers suing BP, asked Gower if most scheduled maintenance of equipment at the refinery was put on hold due to the mandated budget cuts.

"I don't know that most of them were. We looked at how long these units can run between their (maintenance) cycles," said Gower.

During the trial, Coon has argued the budget cuts led to a general state of disrepair at the refinery and helped create conditions that contributed to the blast, which killed 15 people and injured more than 170 others.

Coon also questioned Gower about a February internal report by BP that recommended four executives and managers, including Gower, be fired for failing to perform their jobs and demonstrating poor judgment.

Gower said he was "disappointed in the quality of the report." He said that since the report came out, he has been told by his supervisors that he will keep his job.

In the report, Kathleen Lucas, the operations manager at the refinery, "was appalled by the general state of disrepair when she returned" after being away 10 years.

"Things they attribute in that report to me I certainly did not say. I can't say if she said those things," said Gower, who was set to continue testifying Thursday.

Earlier on Wednesday in his videotaped deposition, Maslin talked about how safety could have been improved at the Texas City plant.

He said much of the computer technology was from the 1980s and needed to be updated. He also said the refinery should have had technology that could have automatically shut down systems in an emergency.

The explosion at the plant, located about 40 miles southeast of Houston, occurred after a piece of equipment called a blowdown drum overfilled with highly flammable liquid hydrocarbons.

The excess liquid and vapor hydrocarbons were then vented from the drum and ignited as the isomerization unit -- a device that boosts the octane in gasoline -- started up. Alarms and gauges that were supposed to warn of the overfilled equipment didn't work properly.

The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, one of several agencies that probed the accident, found BP fostered bad management at the plant and that cost-cutting moves by BP were factors in the explosion.

An internal report by London-based BP released in May said there was a culture at the plant that seemed to ignore risk, tolerated noncompliance and accepted incompetence.

The trial, which began last week, could last up to two months.

About 1,350 of the thousands of lawsuits filed since the accident have been settled.

The blast has cost the company at least $2 billion in compensation payouts, repairs and lost profit.