A very expensive mistake (Image: US Coast Guard via Getty Images)

Guilty as charged. Yesterday a federal US court found BP grossly negligent in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, one of the worst environmental disasters in US history. The ruling leaves the oil company liable for up to $18 billion in fines. But four years on, the drilling industry may not have learned any lessons.

After the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in April 2010, 11 people were killed and millions of barrels of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico. The event has had lasting effects for local wildlife like coral and shrimps. BP, working with other groups like the US Coast Guard, has already spent more than four years and $14 billion on cleaning up the coast.

Yesterday’s court decision lays the lion’s share of the blame at BP’s feet. US district judge Carl Barbier found BP 67 per cent responsible for the spill, with contractors Transocean and Halliburton sharing the remainder of the blame. “BP’s conduct was reckless,” wrote Barbier.


Nailed to the wall

The ruling is the company’s “worst case scenario”, says Bob Cavnar, author of Disaster on the Horizon: High stakes, high risks, and the story behind the Deepwater well blowout. “Barbier really threw the book at BP.”

The charge of gross negligence means the company may be asked to pay about four times more – $4300 per barrel of oil spilled rather than $1300 – than if it had just been classed as negligence.

In a statement released later the same day, BP said that they strongly disagreed with the decision and intend to appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

There are still some uncertainties about the case. A second phase of the trial will determine the exact size of the spill, in order to calculate the size of BP’s fine. The company didn’t closely track the amount of oil at the time, but scientists can estimate it using records of the changing pressure in the oil reservoir and information about the make-up of the surrounding rocks. The US government estimates it was between 4 and 5 million barrels.

No change

Whatever the size of the fine, industry experts say that the judgment is unlikely to lead to large changes in how the oil industry operates.

There have been a few changes in the way the government oversees the industry, says John Hughett, a petroleum engineer in Dallas, Texas, and an expert witness for the case. For a while, it was more difficult to obtain drilling permits, and there seemed to be an increase in routine inspections of wells.

But overall, Hughett says, the case will probably not lead to major changes. “I don’t think that the ruling changes the mindset of the people that are already involved in that type of work. It may heighten their awareness,” says Hughett. “I don’t see anything in there that would change the way we really fundamentally operate.”

Cavnar agrees. Since the spill, the US Congress has been slow to enact stricter rules for drillers, he says. “We had a moment in time, when this disaster came to the consciousness of the public, that we had a chance of actually getting something done, but it was tamped down so quickly,” says Cavnar. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to get another before we’re going to get through the noise from all the industry money that keeps the government from applying all the industry regulations and safer practices.”