Halliburton settles Macondo case
The US Department of Justice has closed its investigation into Halliburton’s role in the 2010 Macondo oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Halliburton revealed on Thursday that a federal judge in New Orleans, Louisiana, had accepted the single misdemeanour guilty plea for the unauthorised deletion of a computer record that was created after the Macondo well incident.
As previously reported, the charge resulted in the US company paying a fine of $200,000 and being placed on three years’ probation.
Halliburton provided cementing services on BP’s deep-water Macondo well which suffered a blow-out while being temporarily suspended as a future producer in the Mississippi Canyon area of the US Gulf.
The subsequent explosion and fire onboard the Transocean semi-submersible Deepwater Horizon claimed the lives of 11 workers.
It was alleged two separate Halliburton managers were ordered to delete simulations trying to determine whether using more centralisers in the well job could have averted the disaster.
Before the blow-out, Halliburton had recommended BP use 21 centralisers in the Macondo well, however the UK supermajor opted to use six centralisers instead.
According to the DOJ, the simulations which were deleted ultimately showed little difference between using six versus 21 centralisers.
An estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the US Gulf of Mexico as a result of the blow-out, making it the worst offshore oil spill in US history.
