BP pays out $4.5bn as workers charged

Two men who worked for BP during the 2010 oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico have been charged with manslaughter and a third with lying to federal investigators, according to indictments made public yesterday, hours after BP announced it was paying $4.5bn in a settlement with the US government over the disaster.

A federal indictment in New Orleans claims BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine acted negligently in their supervision of key safety tests performed on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig before the explosion killed 11 workers in Apr 2010.

The indictment says Kaluza and Vidrine failed to phone engineers onshore to alert them of problems in the drilling operation.

Another indictment charges David Rainey, who was BP’s vice-president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, on charges of obstruction of Congress and false statements. The indictment claims the former executive lied to federal investigators when they asked him how he calculated a flow rate estimate for BP’s blown-out well in the days after the disaster.

Earlier, BP said it would plead guilty to criminal charges related to the deaths of 11 workers and lying to Congress.

The day of reckoning comes more than two years after the nation’s worst offshore oil spill. The figure includes nearly $1.3bn in criminal fines — the biggest criminal penalty in US history — along with payments to certain government entities.

“We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders,” said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP chairman. “It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims.”

The settlement, which is subject to approval by a federal judge, includes payments of nearly $2.4bn to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350m to the National Academy of Sciences, and about $500m to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC accused BP of misleading investors by lowballing the amount of crude spewing from the ruptured well.

London-based BP said the settlement would not cover any civil penalties the US government might seek under the Clean Water Act and other laws. Nor does it cover billions of dollars in claims brought by states, businesses, and individuals, including fishermen, restaurants, and property owners.

A federal judge in New Orleans is weighing a separate, proposed $7.8bn settlement between BP and more than 100,000 businesses and individuals who say they were harmed by the spill.

Before yesterday, the only person charged in the disaster was a former BP engineer arrested in April on obstruction of justice charges. He was accused of deleting text messages about BP’s response to the spill.

The previous largest corporate criminal penalty assessed by the US justice department was a $1.2bn fine imposed on drugmaker Pfizer in 2009.