A federal judge found that Anadarko Petroleum Corp. (NYSE: APC) was not culpable in the well-drilling operations that led to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico.
The March 21 ruling came after the Justice Department made the push for the Woodlands-based Anadarko be held responsible along with BP PLC (NYSE: BP) for the April 20, 2010, drilling disaster and rig explosion that killed 11 workers and led to the nation’s worst offshore oil leak.
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The Justice Department had pointed to internal emails from Anadarko officials that discussed drilling the well deeper than BP had planned prior to the explosion.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier told Justice Department lawyers that the argument was not going to work because he had already ruled that "Anadarko had no legal duty to intervene in the well and could not be negligent" because BP was in charge of the well-drilling decision making.
"Today's ruling is consistent with previous court determinations that we were not at fault for the Deepwater Horizon event," Anadarko President and CEO Al Walker said in a prepared statement. "We look forward to seeing the Clean Water Act portion of the trial resolved soon."
BP is facing civil fines of up to $17 billion, mostly through the Clean Water Act penalties and fines. As a partial drilling partner with BP, Anadarko could potentially still be held liable though for some of the spill damages.
In emails, Anadarko agreed to a drilling halt prior to the explosion. “In the event BP concludes it is safe and prudent to continue drilling,” Anadarko said it “would not oppose BP doing so.”
But Bloomberg reported that Anadarko employee Robert Quitzau, an Anadarko employee, told colleagues in an email 11 days prior to the explosion that the company should wait for a better time to request that BP drill to deepen the Macondo well.
“My sense is that BP doesn’t like to make changes to a plan at the last minute,” Bloomberg reports Quitzau as saying in the email. “So it might be better to propose any further drilling deeper after new plans and budget can be put in place.”
In its March 13, 2014, court motion to have the court exclude all evidence regarding Anadarko's culpability, Anadarko attorneys argued that the company "had no operational control over the Deepwater Horizon, and as a matter of law Anadarko was not negligent, breached no legal duty, did not cause or contribute to the discharge, and bears no fault."
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