A former BP Plc engineer charged with obstructing justice after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill pleaded guilty to a lesser charge on Friday and was sentenced to six months of probation, a US Justice Department spokesman said. Kurt Mix, who had been tasked by BP to analyze the flow rate of oil gushing from its blown-out Macondo well, entered his plea before US District Judge Stanwood Duval in New Orleans.
Prosecutors accused Mix of deleting hundreds of text and voice messages that may have proven BP lied about how much oil was leaking into the gulf in what became the worst offshore environmental disaster in US history. The engineer was convicted in 2013 on one count of obstructing justice, but Duval later threw out the conviction because of misconduct by the jury foreman. It was a setback for the Department of Justice's effort to hold individuals criminally liable for the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and its aftermath. Mix pleaded guilty on Friday to a misdemeanor charge of intentionally damaging a protected computer without authorization. Federal prosecutors dropped an obstruction of justice charge, Mix's lawyers said.