Feds Make First Arrest in Connection With BP Spill


The Justice Department on Tuesday made its first arrest in connection
with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, charging a former BP drilling
engineer with destroying evidence sought by federal authorities
investigating the April 2010 environmental disaster.

The Associated Press reports that Kurt Mix, 50, is accused of deleting
roughly 300 text messages with a BP supervisor that recounted the oil
company's failing efforts to cap the runaway well. Mix allegedly deleted
around 200 messages from his iPhone in October 2010 and another 100
messages in August of the following year after learning that his
electronic files were set to be collected.

The Justice Department alleges that those messages—some of which were
later recovered forensically—included sensitive internal information
collected in real-time as BP engineers struggled to plug the well that
shows the company *intentionally underreported* the scope of the disaster.

In one message, Mix allegedly indicated to his supervisor that oil was
flowing out of the well at a rate of more than 15,000 barrels per day,
more than three times the 5,000-bpd figure that BP had been reporting to
the public at the time.

The flow rate was a major point of contention between the oil company,
federal authorities and the media during the 87-day spill, particularly
in regards to engineers' attempts to plug the well. In the end, federal
regulators estimated that the spill averaged a daily flow rate of more
than 50,000 barrels.

If convicted, Mix faces up to 20 years in prison and fines of up to
$250,000 on each of the two counts of obstruction of justice, NPR
reports. He is scheduled to appear in a Houston federal court on Tuesday
afternoon.

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Gee whiz...the corporation deceived the public.