The first BP oil spill arrest: An instant guide - The Week

The first BP oil spill arrest: An instant guide

Two years after the devastating disaster, the feds arrest a fairly minor player in the major BP oil spill. What's going on?

posted on April 25, 2012, at 9:04 AM

Former BP engineer Kurt Mix leaves the federal courthouse in Houston, after he was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice for allegedly deleting text messages related to BP's Deepwater Horizon oil spill and cleanup. Photo: REUTERS/Richard Carson SEE ALL 60 PHOTOS

Almost exactly two years after BP's Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling rig exploded, killing 11 people and eventually sending more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, the Justice Department made its first arrest relating to the disaster on Tuesday. Federal investigators charged former BP engineer Kurt Mix, 50, with two criminal counts of obstructing justice for deleting hundreds of potentially damning text messages. What's the story with this curiously belated arrest? Here, a concise guide:
How was Mix involved in the disaster?Until he resigned last June, Mix was a drilling engineer at BP. He was part of the several attempts to stanch the flow of oil as well as internal efforts to determine how much oil was gushing into the Gulf. According to prosecutors, Mix erased more than 200 text messages with his supervisor sent in October 2010, upon learning that BP's lawyers were requiring that all electronic communications related to the spill be kept and sent to directly to them; Mix deleted some 100 more in August 2011. Mix's lawyer, Joan McPhee, says the information in the texts was duplicated in emails and other documents Mix did preserve, making the "misguided" case an example of "startling government overreach."
What was in the deleted text messages?The government says the erased messages, some of which were recovered forensically, include "sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time" about BP's failed efforts to seal the well, including the "top kill" operation that pumped heavy drilling mud down the well. In one text sent during the "top kill" attempt, Mix allegedly alerted his supervisor that the well had "too much flowrate — over 15,000 and too large an orifice." BP engineers had already determined that the "top kill" plan wouldn't work if 15,000 or more barrels per day of oil were gushing out, instead of the 5,000 BP was reporting to the public.
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