BP Oil Spill Criminal Investigation May Ensnare Executives In Cover-Up
Two-year criminal investigation into the spill using BP's internal flow-rate models On April 25, 2010, three days after the Deepwater Horizon rig sank in the Gulf of Mexico, Doug Suttles, a senior BP executive, told reporters the company's deep-sea well was leaking about 1,000 barrels of oil a day, a fraction of its maximum output."This is a long way away from something more significant," Suttles said.Yet as Suttles and other BP executives assured the nation that the leak was small, the oil company's engineers had developed internal models showing a probable flow that was magnitudes greater, setting the stage for an unparalleled disaster, according to a newly unsealed federal affidavit and internal BP documents.BP's internal flow-rate models -- and growing evidence that BP employees may have deliberately withheld from federal officials the damaging information found in them -- have emerged as a major focus of the Justice Department's two-year criminal investigation into the spill, according to legal experts and attorneys involved in litigation over the disaster.Documents obtained by The Huffington Post also indicate that Kurt Mix, a senior BP engineer charged April 24 with obstruction of justice, shared information with more senior BP executives during the spill, including a senior ...
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