Former Halliburton employee faces charges for destroying oil spill evidence

A former Halliburton employee was charged Thursday with destroying evidence following BP's 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Anthony Badalamenti, who had been the cementing technology director for Halliburton Energy Services, was charged in federal court Thursday with instructing two other employees to delete data during a post-spill review of the cement job on BP's blown-out well.

Halliburton was BP PLC's cement contractor on the drilling rig that exploded in the Gulf in April 2010, killing 11 workers and triggering the largest offshore oil spill in US history.

The 61-year-old Badalamenti of Katy, Texas, is charged in a bill of information, which typically signals that a defendant is cooperating with prosecutors.

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Prosecutors said that in May 2010, Badalamenti directed a senior program manager to run computer simulations on centralizers, which are used to keep the casing centered in the wellbore. The results indicated there was little difference between using six or 21 centralizers. The data could have supported BP's decision to use the lower number.

Badalamenti is accused of instructing the program manager to delete the results. The program manager "felt uncomfortable" about the instruction but complied, according to prosecutors.

A different Halliburton employee also deleted data from a separate round of simulations at the direction of Badalamenti, who was acting without the authorization of the company, prosecutors said.

Halliburton notified investigators from a Justice Department task force about the deletion of data.

Did Halliburton notify the investigators themselves? Or was it a whistleblower?

Amazing how corrupt and rotten these big oil companies are reminds me of governments