Halliburton has admitted that it destroyed evidence after the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico. The company has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine, make a donation of $55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and accept three years of probation.*
The issue that Halliburton was investigated over was whether the company did an adequate job on the cement and equipment that helped stabilize the drill pipe in the center of the hole.
The plea agreement reveals that Halliburton ran two separate computer simulations after the blowout to compare the impact of using six versus 21 centralizers which showed that there was little difference. Halliburton then told its employees to “get rid of” the simulations, throwing a stumbling block in the way of the government investigators as to who was really to blame.
Halliburton's admission now raises questions whether flaws in Halliburton’s cement job were more significant as well as about the blowout preventer ... which was manufactured by a company called Cameron.
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=15858
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/July/13-crm-850.html
* Halliburton made a voluntary contribution of $55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation that was not conditioned on the court’s acceptance of its plea agreement.
P.S. : The 2010 presidential panel that investigated the accident said that the catastrophe was preventable - stating that the companies involved had taken hazardous and time-saving risks.
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