Last Tuesday, April 24, the first criminal charges were quietly
filed in connection with the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Kurt Mix, a former engineer for British
Petroleum (BP), was arrested and charged with two counts of obstruction of
justice. On Thursday, May 3rd,
Mix pleaded not guilty to the crimes.
Unfortunately, this arrest does little to help those whose lives and
businesses were forever changed after the catastrophe.
Mix was assigned to the Top Kill effort, a procedure
designed to eliminate the flow of oil from the leaking well in the Gulf. Mix’s alleged duties include monitoring
the flow of oil from the well. In
the last week of April 2010, Mix’s text messaged oil flow-rate estimates to his
supervisor. These estimates
allegedly ranged from 64,000 barrels per day (BPD) to 138,000 BPD. At this same time, Mix gave estimates
to a contractor assisting in the response effort ranging from 8,600 BPD to
69,500 BPD.
On May 18, 2010, Mix allegedly presented additional
estimates to his supervisor ranging from 1,000 BPD to 146,000 BPD. When assessing Top Kill’s viability in
a meeting, Mix, his supervisor, and BP scientists concluded that Top Kill could
be successful if the well was flowing oil at a rate of around 5,000 BPD. They also determined that if the oil flowed
at a rate higher than 15,000 BPD, Top Kill would likely fail. BP decided to commence the Top Kill
effort on May 26th.
BP’s public estimate at this time was that the well was
leaking at a rate of 5,000 BPD — even though at only one time did Mix estimate
that that the spill was less than 5,000 BPD. Top Kill was publicly given a sixty to seventy percent chance
of success. At the end of the first
day of the Top Kill effort, Mix allegedly sent a text message to his supervisor
that read in part: “[t]oo much flowrate – over 15,000 and too large an orifice.” This text message was allegedly
deleted.
At this same time, BP was publicly stating that Top Kill
was going according to plan. On
May 29th, BP announced that the Top Kill effort was a failure, and
that it was discontinuing the program.
In early 2010, the Department of Justice and the Securities
Exchange Commission began a criminal investigation into the BP oil spill. BP’s outside counsel contacted Mix in
September 2010 in order to “collect all electronic data” relating to the oil
spill. Mix met with the outside
counsel and allegedly gave them hardcopy documents. On October 4th or 5th, Mix allegedly
deleted over two hundred text messages between him, his supervisor, and the
outside contractor. Investigators
were able to recover some, but not all of the deleted messages.
It is worth noting that from April 2010 to June 2010, Mix
received six Legal Hold Notices, all notifying him of his legal obligation to
retain all records relevant to the oil spill, and explicitly referenced text
and instant messages as records to preserve.
The specific offense with which Mix is charged is codified
at 18 U.S.C. 1521(c)(1), and reads as follows: “[w]hoever corruptly
alters, destroys, mutilates, or conceals a record, document, or other object,
or attempts to do so, with the intent to impair the object’s integrity or
availability for use in an official proceeding shall be fine and punished . . .
.” As Mix was alerted to potential
official proceedings several times before allegedly deleting the text messages,
the Department of Justice argues that the deletions were made “corruptly” and
with the intent to impair the object’s availability “for use in an official
proceeding.”
A copy of the complaint can be accessed here.
Ryan Weir
Blogger, Criminal
Law Brief
Hi
ReplyDeleteIt is excellent to see that the Office of Rights is looking to make sure that individuals are attributed for this problem. Nevertheless, if this is all that can be mustered up — two number of impediment of the law against an individual that purportedly dedicated legal actions several weeks after the leak — it does not seem like an sufficient management of the law.
Michigan DUI
I’m surely coming again to read these articles and blogs
ReplyDeletehttp://bpclaimsinfo.com/
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