Halliburton will pay a $200,000 fine after having its guilty plea over destroying evidence relating to the 2010 Macondo disaster accepted by a US court.
The Houston-based energy services industry firm had previously agreed a deal with the US Justice Department to pay the fine, after pleading guilty to a misdemeanour charge.
The company admitted deleting data relating to tests on the cement job of the blown-out well carried out after the Gulf of Mexico spill.
Halliburton could have withdrawn its plea had US District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo rejected the deal with the Justice Department, but this afternoon she said the plea agreement was reasonable.
The company will also be on probation for three years, and continue to cooperate with the criminal investigation into the Gulf of Mexico disaster. It will not face further action in connection with the case, although individual employees could yet be charged in relation to the incident.
Prosecutors had revealed that the company directed a programme manager in May 2010 “to run two computer simulations of the Macondo well final cementing job using Halliburton’s Displace 3D simulation programme to compare the impact of using six versus 21 centralisers”.
Halliburton had recommended to BP the use of 21 centralisers in the well, but BP decided to use six instead.
The simulations suggested little difference between the two findings, but the programme manager “was directed to” destroy the results, with similar evidence destroyed in a subsequent incident a month later.
Haliburton has also made a $55million contribution to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which was not a condition of the guilty plea.
Meanwhile it has emerged a former Halliburton employee has been charged in connection with the incident.
Anthony Badalamenti was charged with instructing two other employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP’s blown-out well.