BP 'misrepresented' Gulf oil spill according to plaintiff lawyers

BP now stand accused of lying and withholding crucial evidence relating to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. The second phase of the trial looking into the disaster, which saw around 4.2 billion barrels of oil spill into the Gulf from the damaged Macondo oil well following a blowout on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has begun amongst claims the company tried to hide the true extent of the damage.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs made the claim that BP had misrepresented the scale of the disaster and the amount of time it took to successfully cap the well and stop the spill. According to Brian Barr, the company did not make any preparations to stop the blowout at the source. He continued to say that the situation was made worse by the fact that BP lied about the amount of oil that was flowing from the well.

The second phase of the trial against BP is looking into the extent of the damage caused by the spill, the amount of oil that leaked and whether the efforts made to plug the leak were adequate enough for the scale of the problem. Fines against the company could reach as high as $18 billion (£11 billion) depending on the trial decision.

According to Mike Brock, lawyer for BP, the company did not lie about the incident and responded in a way that was consistent with US standards and regulations. He said that the flow rate of oil from the well was not misrepresented in such a way that it caused delays in plugging the well and that decisions made at each stage of the disaster were reasonable.

Although BP made an announcement to the public that only around 5,000 barrels of oil were spilling from the well each day, internal emails from the company are being presented as evidence at the trial, which confirm it knew that up to 100,000 barrels were actually leaking per day. The trial will assess whether this misinformation damaged any attempts to stop the spill at an earlier date.

The trial is expected to last a month, but penalties will not be awarded to BP until the third phase of the trial, which is expected to begin at some point next year.