BP, the British petroleum company that shared the 2010 Ig Nobel Prize in chemistry, has filed a lawsuit against two companies involved in an oil leakage of the kind involved in their prize-winning research.
BP was awarded the prize jointly with Eric Adams of MIT, Scott Socolofsky of Texas A&M University, and Stephen Masutani of the University of Hawaii for disproving the old belief that oil and water don’t mix. Their research was published as: “Review of Deep Oil Spill Modeling Activity Supported by the Deep Spill JIP and Offshore Operator’s Committee. Final Report,” Eric Adams and Scott Socolofsky, 2005. The study was reportedly funded in part by BP.)
Reuters, in The Telegraph, reports about the lawsuit:
BP sues Deepwater Horizon owner Transocean for $40bn
On the first anniversary of the major oil spill, London-based BP also announced it is suing Haliburton, the company that cemented the blown-out well, and Cameron International, saying a blowout preventer made by Cameron failed to avert the catastrophe…. Eleven people died when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and about 4.9m barrels of oil later flowed out of the subsurface BP well. BP has subsequently incurred tens of billions of dollars of liabilities from the disaster.
BP accused Transocean of negligence, saying it caused the drilling rig to be “unseaworthy”. “The simple fact is that on April 20, 2010, every single safety system and device and well control procedure on the Deepwater Horizon failed, resulting in the casualty,” BP said….