BP Gulf spill engineer charged over 'deleted emails'

Wednesday 25 April 2012 04:57 EDT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

A former BP engineer was arrested last night in the US and charged with trying to destroy evidence of the extent of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Justice department accused Kirt Mix, 50, of trying to delete text messages between himself and a supervisor including "sensitive internal BP information collected in real time" as the company tried to stop the leak.

Mix was a drilling engineer for BP before he resigned in January this year. During the crisis he worked on a "top kill" involving pumping heavy mud into the well to try to push back the oil during the 2010 spill. Deleted texts included one that said the oil was spilling faster than it would have been doing had the top kill been working.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in