The Gulf oil spill pumped at least 5 billion gallons of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico because of the negligence of BP and Halliburton.
Kurt Mix, a former engineer for BP, was convicted yesterday of intentionally destroying evidence requested by federal criminal authorities investigating the 20 April 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Mix, 52, of Katy, Texas, was convicted by a federal jury in the Eastern District of Louisiana of one count of obstruction of justice and was acquitted on a second count of obstruction of justice. He faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison when sentenced on 26 March 2014.According to court documents and evidence at trial, on 20 April 2010, the Deepwater Horizon rig experienced an uncontrolled blowout and related explosions while closing the Macondo well. The catastrophe killed 11 men on board and resulted in the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history.
Mix was a drilling and completions project engineer for BP. After the blowout, Mix worked on internal BP efforts to estimate the amount of oil leaking from the well and was involved in various efforts to stop the leak. Those efforts included Top Kill, the failed BP effort to pump heavy mud into the blown-out wellhead to try to stop the oil flow. BP sent numerous notices to Mix requiring him to retain all information concerning Macondo, including his text messages.
During October 2010, after Mix learned that his electronic files were to be collected by a vendor working for BP’s lawyers, he deleted on his iPhone a text string containing more than 300 text messages with his BP supervisor. The deleted messages included a text sent on the evening of 26 May 2010, at the end of the first day of Top Kill. In the text, Mix stated, among other things, “Too much flowrate – over 15,000.” Before Top Kill commenced, Mix and other engineers had concluded internally that Top Kill was unlikely to succeed if the flow rate was greater than 15,000 barrels of oil per day (BOPD). At the time, BP’s public estimate of the flow rate was 5,000 BOPD – three times lower than the minimum flow rate indicated in Mix’s text.
By the time Mix deleted these texts, he had received numerous legal hold notices requiring him to preserve such data and had been put on notice of the Department of Justice’s criminal investigation of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
