Halliburton Energy Services has pleaded guilty to destroying evidence related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a disaster from which the Gulf of Mexico has yet to fully recover, the US Department of Justice announced Thursday.
Per the agreement, Halliburton will be subject to three years of
probation and will be required “to continue its cooperation in
the government’s ongoing criminal investigation,” according
to the Justice Department statement. Halliburton, which was
headed by Dick Cheney before he agreed to serve as US vice
president under George W. Bush, also donated $55 million to the
National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. The contribution was not
court-mandated but may have served to curry favor with
investigators.
Halliburton was the cement contractor hired for the drilling rig
that exploded in the Atlantic Ocean on April 20, 2010. Eleven
workers were killed in the blast, which then dumped millions of
gallons of oil into the Gulf for nearly three months
straight.
After the initial blast, Halliburton was asked to examine the
technical aspects of BP’s drilling well, establishing “an
internal working group to examine the Macondo well blowout,
including whether the number of centralizers used on the final
production casing could have contributed to the blowout,” the
Justice Department stated.
Production casings are heavy metal pipes used across the area of
the oil and natural gas reservoir, federal officials noted.
A program manager, in May 2010, was then told “to run two
computer simulations of the Macondo well final cementing job
using Halliburton’s Displace 3D simulation program to compare the
impact of using six versus 21 centralizers.”
While Halliburton recommended BP use 21 centralizers, the company
decided to only use six after simulations indicated it would make little difference.
The program manager “was directed to, and did, destroy
these” incriminating results, Thursday’s statement
said.
Both Halliburton and BP have blamed each other for the cement’s
failing to seal the Macondo well, according to the Associated
Press.
The agreement, while pending court approval, could mean
Halliburton’s weakness in negotiating over spill-related issues,
Tulane University law professor Edward Sherman told
Reuters.
“Their willingness to plead to this may also indicate that
they’d like to settle up with the federal government on the civil
penalties,” he said. “It may indicate a softening of their
position.”
A January 2013 study found that the spill, along with the
environmental effects, contributed to unexplained health problems
among children within ten miles of the coastline. Parents in
Lousiana and Florida told David Abramson, the director of
Columbia University’s National Center for Disaster Preparedness,
that they witnessed “unexplained symptoms among their
children, including bleeding ears, nose bleeds, and the early
start of menstruation among girls.”
Republished from: RT