Transocean Ltd.‘s agreement to plead guilty for its role in the April 2010 Macondo well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has been accepted by a federal court in New Orleans. Transocean owned the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform, which was destroyed in the well blowout, killing 11 men. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo accepted the agreed-upon settlement reached in January with the Department of Justice, in which Transocean pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and agreed to pay $400 million in criminal penalties. Transocean also has agreed to pay $1 billion in civil penalties, which is to be decided in a different court.

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