NEW ORLEANS, Oct 15 (Reuters) - A Halliburton Co manager formally pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court on Tuesdayto destroying evidence in connection with the oilfield servicescompany's role in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexicoin 2010.
The plea by Anthony Badalamenti, former cementing technologydirector, was submitted a month after Halliburton also pleadedguilty to similar charges over the deletion of computersimulations of the stability of the ill-fated Macondo well.
Halliburton provided cementing services for BP at theMacondo drilling operation - including the placement of"centralizers," or huge plugs, at various points in piping as itwas placed inside the drilled well. Centralizers help ensurecement properly seals a well.
Halliburton had recommended BP use 21 centralizers in theMacondo well, and BP chose to use six. Halliburton later claimedthat if BP had followed its recommendation to use more, the wellwould have been more stable.
According to court documents, the government alleged that inMay 2010, as part of Halliburton's review of the oil spill whichbegan in April and was plugged in July, Badalamenti directedanother manager to run computer simulations comparingperformance of 21 centralizers with that of six.
In June that year, Badalamenti allegedly directed a secondmanager to run a similar comparison.
Both times, the simulations indicated there was littledifference between use of 21 centralizers as opposed to six.Prosecutors allege that both times, Badalamenti ordered themanagers to delete the simulation results from their computers,and both complied - even though a company executive had askedemployees to preserve material related to the well.
The Macondo accident killed 11 workers and the governmentsays 4.9 million barrels of oil spilled into the sea. It took 87days to contain the well.
In an ongoing, multi-phase civil trial over the cause of thewell explosion in federal court in New Orleans, both thegovernment and BP contend that faulty cement work by Halliburtoncontributed to the disaster.
BP also contends that Halliburton destroyed computerevidence that would have shown those errors.
BP (BP.)