A US judge has accepted an agreement by British Petroleum to plead guilty for its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and pay $4 billion in penalties for the worst offshore oil spill in US history, a court official said yesterday.
The company had said previously it would plead guilty to 11 felony counts related to the workers’ deaths, a felony related to obstruction of Congress and two misdemeanours.
The April 2010 explosion on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers. The mile-deep (1.6 km) Macondo oil well then spewed 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf, fouling shorelines from Texas to Florida. – (Reuters)
