Oil Giant Halliburton Pleads Guilty to Destroying Crucial Evidence About the Deadly Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Photo Credit: EPAHalliburton Co has agreed to plead guilty to destroying computer test results related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the U.S. Department of Justice said on Thursday.
The government said Halliburton’s guilty plea is the third by a company over the spill and requires the world’s second-largest oilfield services company to pay a maximum $200,000 statutory fine.
Halliburton also agreed to three years of probation and to continue cooperating with the criminal probe into the April 20, 2010, explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig.
The company said in a statement Thursday night that it had agreed to plead guilty ‘to one misdemeanor violation associated with the deletion of records created after the Macondo well incident, to pay the statutory maximum fine of $200,000 and to accept a term of three years probation.’
The Justice Department has agreed it will not pursue further criminal prosecution of the company or its subsidiaries for any conduct arising from the 2010 spill, Halliburton’s statement said, adding that federal officials have also ‘acknowledged the company’s significant and valuable cooperation during the course of its investigation.’
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