High-stakes trial begins over 2010 Gulf oil spill

Pro­tes­tors from the National Audubon Insti­tute, the Gulf Restora­tion Net­work and other orga­ni­za­tions stand out­side Fed­eral court on the first day of the Gulf oil spill set­tle­ment trial in New Orleans Mon­day. U.S. Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bier is sched­uled to hear sev­eral hours of open­ing state­ments Mon­day by lawyers for the com­pa­nies, fed­eral and state gov­ern­ments and oth­ers who sued over the dis­as­ter. Bar­bier is hear­ing the case with­out a jury. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Ger­ald Herbert)

MICHAEL KUNZELMAN

Asso­ci­ated Press

NEW ORLEANS — BP put prof­its ahead of safety and bears most of the blame for the dis­as­trous 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mex­ico, a U.S. Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­ney charged Mon­day at the open­ing of a trial that could result in the oil com­pany and its part­ners being forced to pay tens of bil­lions of dol­lars more in damages.

The London-based oil giant acknowl­edged it made “errors in judg­ment” before the deadly blowout, but it also cast blame on the owner of the drilling rig and the con­trac­tor involved in cement­ing the well. It denied it was grossly neg­li­gent, as the gov­ern­ment contended.

The high-stakes civil case went to trial after attempts to reach an 11th-hour set­tle­ment failed.

Eleven work­ers were killed when the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig leased by the BP exploded on April 20, 2010. An esti­mated 172 mil­lions of gal­lons of crude gushed into the Gulf over the three months that fol­lowed in the worst off­shore oil spill in U.S. history.

Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­ney Mike Under­hill said the cat­a­stro­phe resulted from BP’s “cul­ture of cor­po­rate recklessness.”

“The evi­dence will show that BP put prof­its before peo­ple, prof­its before safety and prof­its before the envi­ron­ment,” Under­hill said in open­ing state­ments. He added: “Despite BP’s attempts to shift the blame to other par­ties, by far the pri­mary fault for this dis­as­ter belongs to BP.”

BP attor­ney Mike Brock acknowl­edged that the oil com­pany made mis­takes. But he accused rig owner Transocean Ltd. of fail­ing to prop­erly main­tain the rig’s blowout pre­ven­ter, which had a dead bat­tery, and he claimed cement con­trac­tor Hal­libur­ton used a “bad slurry” that failed to pre­vent oil and gas from trav­el­ing up the well.

BP has already pleaded guilty to manslaugh­ter and other crim­i­nal charges and has racked up more than $24 bil­lion in spill-related expenses, includ­ing cleanup costs, com­pen­sa­tion for busi­nesses and indi­vid­u­als, and $4 bil­lion in crim­i­nal penalties.

But the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, Gulf Coast states and indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses hope to con­vince a fed­eral judge that the com­pany and its part­ners in the ill-fated drilling project are liable for much more in civil dam­ages under the Clean Water Act and other envi­ron­men­tal regulations.

One of the biggest ques­tions fac­ing U.S. Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bier, who is hear­ing the case with­out a jury, is whether BP acted with gross negligence.

Under the Clean Water Act, a pol­luter can be forced to pay a min­i­mum of $1,100 per bar­rel of spilled oil; the fines nearly quadru­ple to about $4,300 a bar­rel for com­pa­nies found grossly neg­li­gent, mean­ing BP could be on the hook for nearly $18 billion.

The judge plans to hold the trial in at least two phases. The first phase, which could last three months, is designed to deter­mine what caused the blowout and assign per­cent­ages of blame to the com­pa­nies involved. The sec­ond phase will deter­mine how much crude spilled into the Gulf.

Dur­ing open­ing argu­ments, BP and its part­ners pointed the fin­ger at each other in a tan­gle of accu­sa­tions and counter-accusations. But BP got the worst of it, from its part­ners and the plain­tiffs in the case.

Jim Roy, who rep­re­sents indi­vid­u­als and busi­nesses hurt by the spill, said BP exec­u­tives applied “huge finan­cial pres­sure” to “cut costs and rush the job.” The project was more than $50 mil­lion over bud­get and behind sched­ule at the time of the blowout, Roy said.

“BP repeat­edly chose speed over safety,” Roy said, quot­ing from a report by an expert who may testify.

Roy said the spill also resulted from Transocean’s “woe­ful” safety cul­ture and fail­ure to prop­erly train its crew. And Roy said Hal­libur­ton pro­vided BP with a prod­uct that was “poorly designed, not prop­erly tested and was unstable.”

Brad Brian, a lawyer for Transocean, said the com­pany had an expe­ri­enced, well-trained crew on the rig. He said the Transocean work­ers’ worst mis­take may have been plac­ing too much trust in the BP super­vi­sors on the rig.

“And they paid for that trust with their lives,” Brian said. “They died not because they weren’t trained prop­erly. They died because crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion was with­held from them.”

A lawyer for Hal­libur­ton defended the company’s work and tried to pin the blame on BP and Transocean.

“If BP had shut in the well, we would not be here today,” Halliburton’s Don­ald God­win said.

Under­hill, the Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­ney, heaped blame on BP for cost-cutting deci­sions made in the months and weeks lead­ing up the dis­as­ter. He said two BP rig super­vi­sors, Robert Kaluza and Don­ald Vidrine, dis­re­garded abnor­mally high pres­sure read­ings that should have been glar­ing indi­ca­tions of trouble.

Kaluza and Vidrine have been indicted on fed­eral manslaugh­ter charges.

Brock, the BP lawyer, said Transocean employ­ees on the rig also played roles in mis­in­ter­pret­ing the “neg­a­tive pres­sure test.”

“It was a mis­take made by sev­eral men from two dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies,” Brock said. “They were try­ing to get it right. They were try­ing to do the right thing.”

Hun­dreds of attor­neys have worked on the case, gen­er­at­ing roughly 90 mil­lion pages of doc­u­ments, log­ging nearly 9,000 docket entries and tak­ing more than 300 depo­si­tions from wit­nesses who could tes­tify at trial.

“In terms of sheer dol­lar amounts and pub­lic atten­tion, this is one of the most com­plex and mas­sive dis­putes ever faced by the courts,” said Ford­ham Uni­ver­sity law pro­fes­sor Howard Erich­son, an expert in com­plex litigation.

The spill fouled marshes, killed wildlife and closed fish­ing grounds. Sci­en­tists warn that the disaster’s full effect may not be known for years. But they have reported dying coral reefs and fish afflicted with lesions and ill­nesses that might be oil-related.

Posted by AP News on Feb 25 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.