Former BP engineer arrested on U.S. criminal charges related to gulf oil spill

A former BP drilling engineer was arrested Tuesday on charges of intentionally destroying text messages sought by federal authorities as evidence in the wake of the April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, the Justice Department said.

The two charges of obstruction of justice filed against Kurt Mix, in the Eastern District of Louisiana, are the first criminal charges connected to the oil spill caused by a blowout on BP’s Macondo well. If found guilty, Mix could face up to 20 years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines for each count.

Gallery

BP payouts create ‘spillionaires’: The oil spill that was once expected to bring economic ruin to the Gulf Coast instead delivered a gusher of money. But some people wound up getting comparatively little.

Video

Two years after the BP oil spill, tourism in the area seems on the mend, but oystermen and shrimpers are still struggling in troubled waters.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. held out the possibility of further criminal charges — a key uncertainty hanging over the London-based oil giant as it tries to settle claims and move past the disaster, which was the largest oil spill in U.S. history. Eleven men were killed in the explosion that sank the drilling rig. The massive leak destroyed thousands of birds and other wildlife in the region.

“The Deepwater Horizon Task Force is continuing its investigation into the explosion and will hold accountable those who violated the law in connection with the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history,” Holder said in a statement.

The charges against Mix are not related to the multiple errors that led to the blowout or the design of BP’s botched attempts to stop the spill later. Nor do they allege any wrongdoing by the company as a matter of policy.

But the charges do point to the question of what BP knew about the flow rate from the Macondo well and whether it covered up any of that information. Knowing exactly how fast the oil was leaking into the Gulf of Mexico is important because BP is subject to fines based on the amount of oil spilled. Those fines are still being negotiated but could run from $5 billion to more than $15 billion.

The Justice Department complaint says that immediately after the blowout, Mix told his supervisor that his own spill estimates ranged from 64,000 to 138,000 barrels a day, far higher than any figure BP ever reported publicly. He subsequently sent much lower estimates to an outside contractor.

Seth Pierce, a partner and corporate litigation expert at Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, said that “it is extremely rare . . . to bring obstruction-of-justice charges in connection with the destruction of evidence” and that he believed the Justice Department was making “a pressure play” and was “trying to turn this guy in the hope that he’ll rat out other people and say that he was pressured to do it.”

Mix, 50, from Katy, Tex., was a drilling and completions project engineer for BP. The company declined to say how long Mix had been with BP or why he resigned in January.

While it is unclear who was exchanging text messages with Mix, an industry source said that Mix reported to John Sprague, a drilling engineer in charge of BP’s gulf operations, who in turn reported to Pat O’Bryan, the vice president for drilling and completions for the Gulf. O’Bryan was one of two BP executives who flew to the Deepwater Horizon rig hours before the blowout and who later escaped the burning rig.