BP: Halliburton Torched Evidence in Gulf Oil Spill

Halliburton has both intentionally destroyed and conveniently lost evidence relating to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, according to court documents filed by BP. “Halliburton has steadfastly refused to provide these critical testing and modeling results in discovery,” BP’s court filing says, according to CNN. “BP has now learned the reason for Halliburton's intransigence … Halliburton intentionally destroyed evidence related to its nonprivileged cement testing, in part because it wanted to eliminate any risk that this evidence would be used against it at trial.”

BP says that two Halliburton employees testified under oath that they destroyed notes and samples from their testing of the well’s cement mixture because they “were worried about it being misinterpreted in the litigation.” Its computer modeling results, meanwhile, are “inexplicably missing.” BP says it’s hoping to have a third-party expert try to recover the data from a Halliburton computer. The British energy giant is also trying to get sanctions imposed on Halliburton, which maintains that BP was solely responsible for the Deepwater spill. (More Deepwater Horizon stories.)