NEW YORK, May 28 (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department is
investigating whether BP executives lied to Congress
about how much oil leaked in the company’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico
oil spill, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing
people familiar with the investigation.
According to the Journal, prosecutors are looking into
statements the company made to members of Congress at a
closed-door briefing of members of the House Energy and Commerce
Committee by officials from BP, Halliburton Co. and
Transocean Ltd.
Dave Nagel, the executive vice president of BP America, and
David Rainey, the company’s former head of Gulf of Mexico
exploration, were involved in the briefing, the Journal said.
The Journal also said the Justice Department had
investigated whether BP engineers tried to keep information
about the actual size of the leak from the government.
The April 20, 2010 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon
drilling rig killed 11 workers and triggered the largest U.S.
offshore oil spill from the ruptured Macondo well, in which BP
held a 65 percent stake.
Transocean owned the rig, and Halliburton provided cementing
services. About 4.1 million barrels of oil were spilled and not
cleaned up, the U.S. government has estimated.
The Justice Department and BP could not be immediately
reached for comment.
