BP plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. are liable for civil penalties under the Clean Water Act for their roles in the Macondo well blowout in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier, who will oversee a trial scheduled to begin Monday in New Orleans, also ruled that Transocean Ltd., which owned the Deepwater Horizon rig, may be liable for civil penalties under the federal water law but said he was unsure whether Transocean met the definition of the term “operator.” BP was the operator and majority owner (65%) of the Macondo well; Anadarko was a 25% owner of the well.

BP and Anadarko also were ruled to be responsible parties under the Oil Pollution Act for oil that flowed from beneath the surface of the water. Transocean was not found to be a responsible party.

Barbier rejected Anadarko’s argument that oil discharged from Transocean’s rig, not the Macondo well. He wrote that the “uncontrolled movement of oil began in the well.” The rig’s riser and blowout preventer “were merely passive conduits through which oil flowed.”

The Department of Justice argued in court documents that BP, Anadarko and Transocean each are liable for per-barrel civil penalties for oil discharged from the well after it exploded in April 2010.

Earlier this month Mitsui Offshore Exploration of Japan, which held a 10% stake in the Macondo well, agreed to pay $70 million in civil penalties under the Clean Water Act and $20 million for environmental restoration along the Gulf Coast (see Daily GPI, Feb. 22). The civil penalty to be paid by the Mitsui Ltd. subsidiary is the largest ever recovered under the Clean Water Act, but assuming Mitsui’s 10% ownership in Macondo, the penalty equaled a fine of about $175/bbl. The maximum penalty that could have been imposed under federal guidelines for gross negligence is $4,300/bbl.

The latest ruling, and the amount that Mitsui was fined, could compel Anadarko to settle Clean Water Act claims with the government, said Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co.’s Robert Kessler.

“If I were Anadarko, I would be happy to settle on the $180/bbl precedent,” said Kessler. Using Mitsui’s settlement agreement, and Anadarko’s ownership in Macondo (25%), he said the U.S. producer might face a comparable fine of about $225 million. “If I am an Anadarko attorney, there is no real distinction between myself and Mitsui, which also had a nonoperating interest in the well. Anadarko already agreed to settle with BP [on liability claims] at $4 billion, so $225 million is a relatively small item to remove what has the potential to be very large fines. The Mitsui precedent for Anadarko is very reasonable.”

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