BP partner Anadarko emails seen showing role in doomed well

[unhappycamper]

http://www.adn.com/2014/03/21/3386913/bp-partner-anadarko-emails-seen.html

BP partner Anadarko emails seen showing role in doomed well
By JEF FEELEY and LAUREL BRUBAKER CALKINS
Bloomberg NewsMarch 21, 2014

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Anadarko Petroleum officials urged BP to drill deeper into the Gulf of Mexico well that caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history even after BP warned that doing so would be unsafe.

A BP executive and a geologist working on the Macondo well rejected Anadarko's urging to deepen the well, according to emails sent the week before the April 2010 deep-sea blowout. BP officials said in the emails, unsealed this month in lawsuits over the spill, that the well's condition "provided for little to no margin to continue drilling" safely.

Justice Department lawyers are asking U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to consider Anadarko's emails as proof the Texas-based oil explorer was involved in day-to-day monitoring and decisions at the Macondo well when he calculates a potentially multibillion-dollar pollution fine against the drilling partners.

Anadarko, which owned a 25 percent stake in the Macondo well off the Louisiana coast, contends it was a passive investor and can't be held liable for pollution fines from the spill, which sent more than 4 million barrels of oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico, closing fisheries and tainting shorelines from Texas to Florida.

[Nihil]

1. Wonder if Anadarko will do a Halliburton and just shred anything inconvenient?

Or a TransOcean and move their head office out of legal reach?

Or a Chevron and just buy the result they want from a tame judge?

So many possibilities ... and justice simply doesn't figure among them.