March 29, 2024

BP Says Halliburton Must Pay All Gulf Spill Costs

BP paid more than $21 billion in cleanup costs and economic damages as of Dec. 1, the company said on its Web site.

BP and Halliburton accuse each other’s employees of making critical mistakes that caused the blowout in the well off the Louisiana coast in 2010.

BP owned the Macondo lease, and Halliburton provided well-completion services for the project. The two jointly face more than 500 lawsuits, which have been combined for pretrial processing in federal court in New Orleans, where a judge is scheduled to begin a trial in February to determine liability for the spill.

Halliburton, based in Houston, has said in court papers that its cementing-services contract requires BP to indemnify it from all damage claims, even if its employees were found to have shared blame for the disaster. Halliburton has said in court filings that the actions of BP’s employees caused the explosion.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=47ecdde669e3a4b0b0b03894b9c07efc