U.S.: Halliburton agrees to plead guilty in spill

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Halliburton Energy Services has agreed to plead guilty to destroying evidence in connection with the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the Department of Justice said last week.

Federal officials said in a news release that a criminal information charging Halliburton with one count of destruction of evidence was filed in federal court in Louisiana.

Halliburton has agreed to pay the maximum fine of $200,000, be on probation for three years and continue to cooperate with the government’s criminal investigation, according to the news release, which did not list the amount of the fine.

The Houston-based company has also made a $55 million voluntary contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. It was not a condition of the court agreement, the news release says.

The Justice Department has agreed it will not pursue further criminal prosecution of the company or its subsidiaries for any conduct arising from the 2010 spill, Halliburton’s statement said.

The plea agreement is subject to court approval, the company said.

Halliburton was BP’s cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The blowout triggered an explosion that killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf.

According to the news release, Halliburton conducted its own review of the well’s design and construction after the blowout, and established a working group to review “whether the number of centralizers used on the final production casing could have contributed to the blowout.”

Prior to the blowout, Halliburton had recommended to BP the use of 21 centralizers in the well, but BP decided to use six instead, the news release says.

Around May 2010, the news release says, the company directed a program manager to conduct two computer simulations of the Macondo well final cementing job “to compare the impact of using six versus 21 centralizers.”

The simulations indicated there was little difference between using six and 21 centralizers, but the program manager “was directed to, and did, destroy these results,” federal officials say.

Similar evidence was destroyed in a subsequent incident, in June 2010, the Justice Department said.