HOUSTON — Nearly four years after the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion that left 11 dead, a former low-level BP engineer was found guilty Wednesday of obstruction of justice for deleting messages during a federal investigation into how much oil leaked.
Kurt Mix, a drilling and completions project engineer from Katy, Texas, was the first of four current or former BP employees charged criminally for actions related to the well blowout to be tried and convicted.
A federal jury in New Orleans deliberated for more than nine hours before deciding that Mix had been trying to destroy evidence by deleting voice and text communications between himself and a supervisor and a BP contractor.
Prosecutors had argued that some of the messages suggested that company officials knew that an effort to stop the leak in the early days of the 2010 spill would most likely fail, largely because of the overwhelming amount of oil flowing out of the well.