Former Engineer Convicted for Obstruction of Justice in Federal BP Oil Spill Trial

A former engineer for British Petroleum, or BP, was convicted on one count of obstruction of justice, after he allegedly deleted important text messages that could have been used as evidence in the BP Oil Spill trial.

Kurt Mix was acquitted on a second charge of obstruction of justice, but for his first charge, the jury convicted him after nine hours of deliberation. His sentencing hearing is still to come, scheduled for March 26th, but he faces up to 20 years in federal prison, and a $250,000 fine.

Prosecutors in the case argued that the 52-year-old engineer from Katy, Texas, was trying to destroy evidence when he deleted hundreds of text messages from a supervisor and a BP contractor related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast. Mix’s indictment also accused him of deleting voicemails from the same two people.

Defense attorneys insisted that Mix did not hide anything, as he preserved records with the same information and presented them in court during the BP oil spill trials.

Mix did not testify during his two week trial. He is one of four former or current BP employees charged with obstruction of justice related to the oil spill case.

Mix was one of the engineers on a team of experts working to plug the gusher using a technique called “top kill,” which was unsuccessful. Reportedly, he had access to internal data about how much oil was spewing from the well, which BP was accused of falsifying to the public. On May 26th, 2010, Mix reported via text to his supervisors that 630,000 gallons of oil were spilling out of the well per day, which was three times what BP initially reported – the company claimed that 210,000 gallons were spilling out of the well per day.

Allegedly, Mix deleted that string of text messages in October 2010, and in August 2011, he deleted a string of texts that he exchanged with contractor Wilson Arabie. Several weeks prior, federal authorities had subpoena’d BP for copies of correspondence related to the case, including Mix’s text messages and voicemails. Investigators could not recover 17 of the text messages in the string, leading to the charges for obstruction of justice.

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill began on April 20th, 2010. Eleven people died after an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, and is currently the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. The oil site gushed for 87 days, until it was finally capped successfully on July 15th, 2010. An estimated 4.9 million barrels of crude oil leaked into the Gulf.

Several lawsuits came out of the oil spill, which were finally settled in May 2012. BP proposed a $7.8 billion settlement for the 100,000 claims of lost wages and personal injury related to the oil spill.

In August 2012, the US Department of Justice filed papers in a federal court in New Orleans claiming that BP was directly responsible for the oil spill due to “gross negligence and willful misconduct.”

South Carolina Federal Defense Attorneys

If you or a loved one is facing charges of obstructing justice or any other criminal charges in South Carolina courts, you need to contact a federal defense attorney. The South Carolina criminal defense attorneys at the Strom Law Firm will fight to get your charges reduced or potentially dismissed. Contact us today for a free consultation.803.252.4800