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Hallibuton Pleads Guilty To Destroying Simulation Data From 2010 Gulf Oil Spill
An anonymous reader writes "Oilfield services giant Halliburton will plead guilty to destroying computer test results that had been sought as evidence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Company officials threw out test results that showed 'little difference' between the number of devices Halliburton said was needed to center the cement casing in the well at the heart of the disaster and the number well owner BP installed, according to court papers. The issue has been key point of contention between the two companies in hearings and litigation ever since the April 2010 blowout. BP and Halliburton are still battling over responsibility for the disaster in a New Orleans federal courtroom. BP had no comment on the plea agreement Thursday evening."
from TFA:
They 'took a deal' in the parlance of the criminal justice world.
I'm wondering what else is out there. Also in TFA I read that BP was 'convicted' of Manslaughter for its role.
These companies don't 'take deals' unless it is the absolute last option. They will deny and tie up litigation for 10 years until everyone forgets. They will buy judges and prosecutors. They will hire thugs to find dirt on opponents, or make dirt if none exists.
Given their history, the fact that Halliburton, BP, etc took these deals indicates they could be covering for a much larger level of negligence...
In my wildest conspiracy theories, the English Monarchy and other old money global illuminati types (Bush's?) purposefully had the well blown to punish America for stopping Keystone XL.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Cutesy, but the Gulf oil spill was 100% man made. Climate change is man made.
We're at a point in development where we know just enough to be dangerous. And we have a huge industry that's used to f*** up the planet at the whims of clueless and greedy economists.
The nature is big and resilient but not infinitely so. And when the shit starts hitting the fan the poor people who're least responsible for it bear the brunt of the burder, as always. Millions and millions will die thanks to the actions of the 1%.
"Under the plea agreement, which requires court approval, Houston-based Halliburton will also face three years' probation, pay the maximum fine of $200,000..."
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/07/25/halliburton-guilty-plea-destroying-evidence-deepwater-horizon/2588105/
Not too bad... I think they may be able to afford it.
Did they throw out the simulation code as well?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If I pour crude oil into the ocean, destroy the livelyhoods of fishing communities and kill a few of people on an oil platform in a gas fire (and destroy some evidence), I'll get a couple of hundred $k fine. If I buy a gun and go out and shoot the same number of people (and survive the manhunt) I'll get the rest of my life being a jailhouse bitch. Now, I wonder which I would choose?? Haliburton, do you have any vacancies???
Editor. I do not think that word means what you think it means...
Halliburton perpetrates huge fraud on the government (in billions) and nothing is ever done.
They defraud another corporation, they're in trouble.
You see the pattern here? madoff is only in jail because he defrauded other rich people.
"Climate change is man made."
Sooooooo...., the climate didn't change on earth before man appeared here. REALLY?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nq4Bc2WCsdE
Don't be an idiot. Of course it did. For many reasons, not one single factor. What's of concern is that there's a new player at the table: human activity. And whether it's altering climate fast enough to damage human life. And possibly render species extinct at a rate not seen in 65 million years.
"We're at a point in development where we know just enough to be dangerous."
So you're saying that there are clueless and greedy economists involved in Industry, but that their are none in Climate Science?
Or, putting it a different way, Climate Scientists are not included in the above general statement, however commercial scientists are?
I agree 100% with the above statement. And I am confident in applying it across the board. That fact has ramifications.
Well, I don't know about engineering simulations, but I've worked with systems that did public health simulations. What laymen *think* a computer model can do is predict the future. And maybe in some cases a model can come close to doing that. But the real value of models is to generate questions and hypotheses for investigation.
The problem with models is that they're only as good as the input data you feed them, and in many cases the data is unknowable or based on assumptions you aren't sure of. And that leads to a practical application of a model. You don't say, "I know that X is true, therefore Y will or will not happen" because you almost certainly don't know everything you'd need to know to make such a positive prediction. Rather, you say, "If you are worried about Y, you'd better check on X."
Tthat Halliburton destroyed the documentation when it knew that documentation was needed for the DWH investigation makes me wonder whether simulation results suggested Transocean (the operators of DWH) ought to be paying attention to certain preventable factors that contributed to the disaster. Even if that didn't let Transocean off the hook, it might change the distribution of damages and fines paid by the responsible parties.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Sooooooo...., the climate didn't change on earth before man appeared here. REALLY?
Sooooooo......, you're a climate scientist who has spent a substantial part of their life studying the effects that man made atmospheric pollution have on the Earth's climate? No? Then forgive me if I ignore everything you say, and instead listen to people who are qualified to talk on this subject.
My suspicious streak wonders if Anonymous Reader works in the BP PR department.
Ok, we're bringing up Halliburton, which is seen by some as the gold standard in corporate evil, but let's remember that it's BP (AKA Broke Pipeline Inc) that's the plaintiff in this case and are trying to shift the responsibility to Halliburton.
Given the stopping of preventive maintenance and replacing of experienced workers with cheaper ones that BP was widely known for, this is a bit of Pot Kettle Black.
Halliburton hasn't been tagged yet with overall responsibility for the spill as some headlines have claimed, but for destroying computer simulations done before the lawsuits started. That's bad, but it's not some get out of jail free card for BP. There's plenty of responsibility left to go around, and BP was the final word on that rig, not the contractors.
(Full disclosure: My brother worked for Arco before BP bought it. His division was spun off, but he heard quite a good deal about the bone stripping cost cutting that BP did after they bought it. That impacted repeated pipeline spills in Alaska and likely the Deepwater Horizon).
People only say "The 1%" because it's easier to say than what it really is, which is closer to the 0.001%, but the concept is not difficult to grasp. The vast majority of wealth and power is concentrated in very few hands.
But somehow, even this simple concept seems to have gone over your head, and you think that it makes sense to lump someone making $40k/year (in the US, I assume) into the same group as someone making tens of millions per year. At this point I'm going to assume that your feigned ignorance is either real ignorance or, quite possibly, stupidity.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Like banks, oil companies are too big to jail. Minions just don't jail their masters.