A BP engineer has been arrested and charged with trying to destroy evidence that showed how much oil spilled from the company’s broken well during the massive oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in April of 2010.
Kurt Mix, the BP engineer, has been accused of trying to delete sensitive emails written between him and a supervisor, including “sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time,” according to the Justice Department.
He has been charged with two counts of obstruction of justice, relating to the deletion of emails detailing the quantity of oil leaking from the well.
The BP oil spill was the biggest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, more than four million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico before the well was capped in September of 2010. The well was spilling oil for nearly six months.
According to the prosecutors, when Kurt Mix found out his electronic files were going to be collected, in October 2010, he deleted hundreds of messages that indicated the failing of the “top kill” plan even as top BP officials said it was continuing as planned.
Source: Reuters
Image Credits: USGS
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. - Ecclesiastes 3:19
