Ex-BP Executive Acquitted of Lying About Size of 2010 Gulf Oil Spill

By Katy Reckdahl and Margaret Cronin Fisk

(Bloomberg) — The highest-ranking BP Plc govt charged within the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill was discovered not responsible of mendacity to investigators in a blow to prosecutors as the corporate awaits phrase on billions of {dollars} in potential fines for the catastrophe.

Other BP workers nonetheless face prosecution. Two former well- website managers charged with manslaughter are scheduled for trial beginning in February. An engineer accused of destroying proof had his conviction reversed, with a decide ordering a brand new trial for him.

The New Orleans jury on Friday sided with David Rainey, BP’s former vice chairman of Gulf of Mexico exploration, whose lawyer referred to as the case one in all “prosecutors’ overreach.”

U.S. District Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt stated he thought the jury had reached “the correct verdict, based on the evidence.”

Rainey is “grateful and relieved and really wants to put this chapter behind him,” Reid Weingarten, his legal professional, instructed reporters outdoors the courtroom. There was “not a scintilla” of credible proof pointing to wrongdoing by his shopper, Weingarten stated.

Rainey himself declined to touch upon the decision.

“We respect the jury’s verdict,” Leo Tsao, a Justice Department lawyer, instructed reporters with out commenting additional.

Flow Rates

Rainey wasn’t concerned within the drilling of the BP nicely and wasn’t accused of any wrongdoing associated to the blast. The U.S. claimed Rainey cherry-picked info from flow-rate experiences to make the oil spill appear much less catastrophic than it was.

“Today’s verdict demonstrates how difficult it is to prosecute individuals when the primary culprit is a corporate culture run amok,” stated David Uhlmann, a former head of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes part and now a University of Michigan Law School professor.

“In its case against David Rainey, the Justice Department also faced a significant evidentiary hurdle, which is that no one knows how much oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico,” Uhlmann stated in an e-mail.

The jury was already deciding a narrower case than the federal government initially proposed.

Engelhardt threw out an obstruction of Congress cost on Monday, the primary day of the trial. On Wednesday, the decide blasted the federal government for basing its prosecution on a federal investigator’s notes as a substitute of a recorded interview of Rainey.

Relying on such proof is “very dangerous territory,” the decide stated outdoors the presence of the jury. The decide already had been contemplating whether or not to throw out the case towards Rainey whatever the jury’s verdict.

Evidence Trash

Weingarten took up the decide’s considerations in his closing argument to the jury Friday, urging it to reject the investigator’s notes as a result of, he stated, the proof was “a piece of trash.”

The BP nicely blowout off the Louisiana coast in April 2010 killed 11 folks aboard the drilling rig and set off the most important offshore oil spill in U.S. historical past.

The London-based firm earlier pleaded responsible for its half in underestimating the spill’s measurement. BP additionally paid $525 million to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged it downplayed the scale to bolster inventory costs.

BP agreed in 2012 to plead responsible to 11 counts of manslaughter for the deaths and two misdemeanor air pollution regulation violations, paying a $4 billion settlement to the U.S.

Pollution Violation

The firm is awaiting a separate courtroom ruling on how a lot it must pay for violating the U.S. Clean Water Act. The authorities requested U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to fantastic BP a minimum of $12 billion.

BP has argued that any fantastic ought to be a lot decrease, and that Barbier ought to take into account its efforts to cease the spill. Barbier present in September that BP was grossly negligent in inflicting the blowout, elevating the utmost attainable fantastic.

BP has put apart $43.8 billion to pay for the catastrophe. The firm has already paid greater than $28 billion in response, cleanup and compensation, BP stated in a regulatory submitting in April.

Rainey wasn’t attempting to mislead anybody and was scurrying to supply estimates of the move price of a spill that was past anybody’s prior expertise, Weingarten instructed the decide Wednesday.

“Put this miserable case away,” he urged Engelhardt. “This man has suffered for five years and it’s enough.”

Two BP well-site managers, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, have been charged in November 2012 with involuntary manslaughter for the 11 deaths and face trial in February.

The case is U.S. v. Rainey, 12-cr-00291, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana (New Orleans).

–With help from Della Hasselle in New Orleans.