Judge set to preside over 2nd phase of BP trial

Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS

Top kill. Junk shot. Coffer- dam. Top hat. Capping stack. Those terms — obscure industry jargon before BP’s massive 2010 oil spill — became familiar buzzwords as the company scrambled to find a way to plug its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

More than three years later, the methods that BP employed during its 86-day struggle to stop the gusher will be the focus of a trial resuming today in the high-stakes litigation spawned by the nation’s worst offshore oil spill.

BP insists it was properly prepared to respond to the disaster, but plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue the London-based global oil company could have capped the well much sooner if it hadn’t ignored decades of warnings about the risks of a deep-water blowout.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are teaming up with attorneys for the five Gulf states and two of BP’s contractors for the second phase of the trial, also say BP repeatedly lied to federal officials and withheld information about the volume of oil flowing from the well.

BP maintains that its spill preparations complied with every government requirement and met industry standards. But the April 20, 2010, blowout of its Macondo well a mile under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles off the Louisiana coast presented “unforeseen challenges,” the company’s attorneys wrote.

The federal judge presiding over the case without a jury has set aside exactly 120 hours over 16 days for the trial’s second phase, which he divided into two segments.

The first part, lasting four days, focuses on BP’s efforts to seal the well. The second segment, lasting 12 days, is designed to help U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier determine exactly how much oil spilled into the Gulf.