Two Years Later: BP Facing Charges
Posted by admin on Jun 14, 2012 under UncategorizedTwo years after the initial Deepwater Disaster, BP will begin to face charges in the aftermath. BP will be charged by the federal government due to its violations of regulations that contributed to the disaster.
The first criminal charges were levied earlier in the year.
In April of 2012, Kurt Mix, an engineer for BP, was the first person that had charges levied against him after the spill. He was charged with obstruction of justice in the first criminal charges issued after the calamitous 2010 oil spill that brought havoc to the Gulf of Mexico.
Mix allegedly deleted scores of text messages to supervisors that detailed the seriousness of the spill as it was occurring. The deletion of the text messages is the basis for the obstruction of justice charges.
The actual BP oil spill that comprised the Deepwater Horizon disaster was one of the worst in American history. It is believed that upwards of 5,000 barrels of oil per day flooded the ocean until the spill was contained. This created an ecological disaster that had not happened in decades with the closest similar disaster being the offshore Santa Barbara spill of the late 1960′s.
Negligence and omission are at the root of the law enforcement investigations into the matter.