From the Houston Chronicle's FuelFix blog:
A federal judge on Thursday ruled that BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico four years ago was the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct by the London oil company.
The decision could cost BP billions of dollars more in fines for fouling the ocean.
The 152-page ruling comes more than four years after a subsea well blowout triggered an explosion at BP’s leased Deepwater Horizon platform on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and sending millions of barrels of oil into the ocean, along with the drilling platform that sank a few days later.
It was the biggest oil spill in U.S. history, lasting 86 days and spreading across hundreds of miles of beach in Louisiana, Texas and surrounding states. It spurred thousands of lawsuits and billions in fines and cleanup costs for BP, Transocean and Halliburton.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of New Orleans said in his ruling BP committed a series of negligent acts and omissions that resulted in the discharge of oil, including drilling a final 100 feet in the Macondo well “with little or no margin.”
A ruling of gross negligence is one of the key factors that could lead to the maximum penalty of Clean Water Act fines for BP, $18 billion, if Barbier later sides with U.S. prosecutors that 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf. Barbier has yet to rule on the amount of oil spilled, but could hand down a judgement at any time....MORE
