The second phase of the multi-billion-dollar civil damages trial of BP and its drilling partners came to an end Friday afternoon, with a last round of arguments over how to measure the millions of barrels of oil released into the Gulf of Mexico after the April 2010 Macondo well blowout. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is expected to set next week a schedule for attorneys to file additional arguments, and the judge will also need to schedule the penalty phase of the case, which will eventually determine how many billions BP will have to pay in fines stemming from the disaster. Weve come to the end of this trial a week early, Barbier said after Justice Department attorneys announced they had finished questioning of their last rebuttal witness at about 3:30 p.m. I havent calculated the time today, but obviously we have many hours left (of the time set aside for the trial). So I appreciate counsels help in moving this matter along. Barbier is hearing evidence without a jury in the complex court proceedings that have consolidated issues raised by more than 100,000 plaintiffs in thousands of lawsuits filed in courts around the country. He said he will likely issue an order on Monday setting a schedule for attorneys to submit post-trial briefings summarizing their take on the evidence. That process is likely to take several months. The second phase of the trial was aimed at determining what actions BP and Anadarko Petroleum Corp., which owned 10 percent of the Macondo well, took to halt the oil spill, and how much oil actually entered the Gulf. Barbier said he must also determine when to set the third phase of the trial, at which BP, its partners, the federal government and attorneys representing private claimants will argue over the civil fines the companies involved in drilling the well must pay for violating the federal Clean Water Act, the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 and various other federal laws. The Justice Department already has filed a request for Barbier to rule that the minimum amount of oil on which the fines should be based is 2.4 million barrels of oil. The governments argument is based on information contained in the expert report of BP witness Alain Gringarten, which estimated that amount of oil was discharged between April 20 and July 15, 2010. The Justice Departments motion says at least 42,070 barrels of oil were flowing from the well on July 15, the day the well was capped, based on the expert report of BP witness Simon Lo. However, government attorneys also argued during the proceedings that as much as 5 million barrels of oil flowed from the well. Barbier already has ruled that whatever the total, 810,000 barrels that were collected in ships directly from pipes connected to the well during the spill will be subtracted, since that oil did not enter the Gulf. In the penalty hearing, Barbier also must rely on evidence and testimony presented in the first phase of the trial that ended in April, which focused on whether BP and its drilling partners acted with negligence or with gross negligence or willful neglect in their actions leading up to the Macondo well blowout. The Clean Water act allows Barbier to charge up to $1,100 per barrel of oil spilled if he finds BP and its drilling partners were negligent, and up to $4,300 per barrel if he finds the companies were grossly negligent or acted with willful misconduct. That would result in fines ranging from $2.7 billion to $18 billion. However, in setting the fines, Barbier also must weigh a variety of other issues involving the companies, including whether they acted quickly when the accident occurred and to limit the spill, and the effects of the fine on their businesses. Those issues would be addressed in the penalty phase. Barbier said there likely will be separate court proceedings focusing on the state of Alabamas claims of damage, which will likely be mirrored in similar proceedings for Louisiana and other Gulf states that claim to be owed money for damages by BP and its partners. Dates for those proceedings have not yet been set. Barbier also is overseeing separate court proceedings involving claims filed against BP by businesses and individuals for damages resulting from a moratorium on drilling that was ordered by the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement in the aftermath of the blowout. BP refused to include those claims in a multi-billion-dollar settlement of private economic and medical claims that was approved by Barbier in November 2012. BP and the Plaintiffs Steering Committee, representing the private claimants, have selected several test business moratorium claims that will be considered in court during the next few months. Barbier also is scrambling to approve new rules governing the payment of business economic claims under the private settlement, after the original rules set by the court-appointed claims office -- and approved by him -- were thrown out by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month. Those rules were appealed by BP, which argued the rules allowed some businesses to be paid for fictitious claims. The 5th Circuit also is holding a hearing on Nov. 4 on a challenge to the private settlement by a variety of businesses and individuals who contend the settlement did not adequately compensate them for their damages. BP has intervened in that proceeding, arguing that the entire private claims settlement should be thrown out unless new business economic claims rules are rewritten in a way that is satisfactory to the company. BPs recent aggressive actions challenging the claims process result from its underestimation of how much the private settlement would cost. The oil giant originally believed the claims would total $7.8 billion, but has since told stockholders that its likely to cost at least $8.4 billion, and could rise if the business rules arent rewritten. On Friday, Barbier at times joked about the lengthy court proceedings, which have produced hundreds of thousands of pages of documents in court motions, expert reports and other evidence. In the morning, he pointed out that both the Justice Department and BP had only used up about half the time he and Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan set aside for this phase of the trial. Barbiers staff has been using the equivalent of a chess clock to keep track of the time used by the lawyers on all sides. This proves my point Ive been telling Judge Shushan all along, Barbier said. She gave yall too much time. Justice Department attorneys on Friday called three expert witnesses to rebut small parts of testimony given by BPs expert witnesses in the past few days. Lief Larsen, a senior reservoir engineer with Norway-based Kappa Engineering, testified that a BP witness used improper methods of determining the sponge-like permeability of the rock in the Macondo well. The reservoirs permeability was nearly four times as high as the BP witness said, which would result in more oil being released during the spill, Larsen said. Jean-Claude Roegiers, recently retired professor of petroleum and geological engineering at the University of Oklahoma, testified that estimates by BP witnesses of the compressibility of the rock in the reservoir were improperly based on measurements of samples drilled out of the side of the well, rather than at its bottom. Roegiers said the samples were too small for the tests, were not of good quality or were contaminated with drilling mud, and were tested improperly. Roegiers backed up his contention with emails between BP employees that contained references to the rock samples such as, They do look iffy, This wont give us much to work with, and Its really sad that they didnt get better recovery of samples. Roegiers used two samples of cork to show how the rock samples should have been tested, prompting a moment of levity from Barbier, who said they looked like wine corks. You can have them if you want, Rogiers said, handing the corks to the judge. No. I prefer screw tops, Barbier said, turning down the offer. Roegiers also prompted laughter from the courtroom audience, still packed with lawyers from the Justice Department, individual states, BP and others, when BP attorney Barry Fields introduced himself at the beginning of his cross examination. I remember you, Roegiers said. I hope thats a good thing, Fields said. Its called nightmares, Roegiers responded. Fields pointed out that the samples from the wells sidewall were the only ones collected from the Macondo well, and that the center core samples Roegiers said should be used were not available. You agree that others do test rotary sidewall cores? Fields asked. Yes, with the risk of strange numbers, Roegiers replied. When his testimony was over, Barbier asked, Was that a nightmare? Ill have a dream about you, Roegiers responded. The final witness was Alan Huffman, a rock physicist who also testified during the first phase of the trial. Barbier allowed Huffman to testify despite protests by BP that he was repeating testimony already given by other Justice expert witnesses. Justice attorney Richard Gladstein promised to limit his testimony to 15 minutes. Okay, youre on the clock, Barbier said. Huffman also focused on the core samples used by BP, saying that the porosity readings BP assigned to them did not match porosity readings contained in well logs over a broader area of the three layers of rock containing oil in the reservoir. The well logs are maps of rock layers created by measuring electrical signals passed through the rock. nola/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2013/10/testimony_ends_in_second_phase.html
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 03:30:13 +0000