Tuesday, April 24, 2012
NEW ORLEANS — A BP engineer intentionally deleted more than 300 text messages that said the company's efforts to control the Gulf of Mexico oil spill were failing and that the amount of oil leaking was far more than what the company reported, the Justice Department said Tuesday.
In the first criminal charges related to the deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010, the Justice Department arrested Kurt Mix. He was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly destroying evidence federal authorities sought, officials announced in a statement.
The charges came a day before a federal judge in New Orleans was to consider preliminarily approving a $7.8 billion settlement between BP and a committee of plaintiffs representing more than 100,000 victims of the spill.
Cement contractor Halliburton is objecting to the proposed settlement. Halliburton said in a filing ...