BP CLAIMS US GOVT IS WITHHOLDING IMPORTANT OIL SPILL EVIDENCE

BP has claimed that the US government is withholding evidence that would prove that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was smaller than had been claimed. In August 2010 the US government estimated that 4.9m barrels of oil plus or minus 10% had spilled from the Macondo oil field into the Gulf of Mexico. BP said that it was the US was bringing the case seeking monetary penalties against BP, and that it was therefore "fundamentally unfair" to allow it to suppress some 80,000 documents that could relate to the case. BP made its plea to US Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan, who will make recommendations regarding evidential issues to Judge Carl Barbier, who is presiding over the main liability case. That will eventually decide how the blame will be attributed between the self-insured BP and the market-insured Transocean and Halliburton, neither of which has reached any settlement with BP. Judge Barbier is scheduled to hold an in camera meeting with lawyers on May 3 to discuss how to proceed with the case.