NEW ORLEANS - BP Plc’s doomed Macondo well dumped 4.2 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, a lawyer for the U.S. told a judge who is assessing the size of the spill and how well the company reacted to the disaster.
The U.S. contends 5 million barrels of oil were released from the well, while agreeing with BP that 810,000 barrels were captured by a siphoning device at the wellhead.
“The question for you, your honor, is not how much oil was collected, but how much was not,” Steven O’Rourke, a lawyer for the Justice Department, told U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans on Monday in the second phase of the trial over the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Barbier is already weighing whether the Londonbased company’s actions in causing the April 20, 2010, blowout and subsequent spill off the Louisiana coast reached the level of gross negligence, which would lead to higher fines and punitive damages. His decision on the size of the spill maymean billions of dollars to BP.
The blowout killed 11 people aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The accident spawned hundreds of lawsuits against BP, as well as Transocean Ltd., owner of the rig that burned and sank, and Halliburton Co., which provided cement services for the project.
The judge’s endorsement of the U.S. spill estimate could trigger a maximum fine of $18 billion under the Clean Water Act if he finds gross negligence. A finding affirming BP’s assessment that the spill was 40 percent smaller than the government says might shave as much as $7.5 billion from the maximum payment.
The “quantity of the oil released” may also help determine how much BP will have to pay for natural-resource damage claims, Justice Department lawyers said in a Sept. 5 filing.
The defense estimates are “substantially lower” than those by the government witnesses, O’Rourke told Barbier on Monday. “And the question for you, judge, is why is there such a difference?”
First, BP’s experts are “disavowing” information that the company provided to the government during the oil spill response, O’Rourke said. Second, BP experts theorize that the flow rates didn’t increase until weeks after the spill began, he said.
“The evidence will show that those theories are notvalid,” O’Rourke said.
BP has countered that the U.S. assessment is flawed and the government hasn’t used the most accurate data. BP estimates 2.45 million barrels spilled into the Gulf before the well was capped.
“BP will present information and opinions based on known data,” Mike Brock, a lawyer for the company, said in his opening statement Monday. “Known data before the spill and known data after the spill.”
The first phase of the trial, which started in February, addressed actions by BP, Transocean and Halliburton leading to the explosion in the Macondo well and the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon.
The second phase, which began Sept. 30, is split into two parts, with last week’s consideration of allegations that BP’s failings caused the spill to last longer. The second part, which began Monday and is scheduled to last three weeks, will determine how much oil was spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.
Business, Pages 23 on 10/08/2013