HOUSTON — Donald J. Vidrine and Robert Kaluza were the two BP supervisors on board the Deepwater Horizon rig who made the last critical decisions before it exploded. David Rainey was a celebrated BP deepwater explorer who testified to members of Congress about how many barrels of oil were spewing daily in the offshore disaster.
Mr. Vidrine, 65, of Lafayette, La., and Mr. Kaluza, 62, of Henderson, Nev., were indicted on Thursday on manslaughter charges in the deaths of 11 fellow workers; Mr. Rainey, 58, of Houston, was accused of making false estimates and charged with obstruction of Congress. They are the faces of a renewed effort by the Justice Department to hold executives accountable for their actions. While their lawyers said the men were scapegoats, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a news conference, “I hope that this sends a clear message to those who would engage in this kind of reckless and wanton conduct.”
The defense lawyers were adamant that their clients would contest the charges, and prosecutors said that the federal investigations were continuing.
Legal scholars said that by charging individuals, the government was signaling a return to the practice of prosecuting officers and managers, and not just their companies, in industrial accidents, which was more common in the 1980s and 1990s.
“If senior managers cut corners, or if they make decisions that put people in harm’s way, then the criminal law is appropriate,” said Jane Barrett, a University of Maryland law professor and former federal prosecutor.
She noted that it was unusual for the Justice Department to prosecute individual corporate officers in recent years, including in the 2005 BP Texas City refinery explosion that killed 15 workers, where only the company was fined.
BP said on Thursday it would pay $4.5 billion in fines and other payments, and the corporation pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges in connection with spill. The $1.26 billion in criminal fines was the highest since Pfizer in 2009 paid $1.3 billion for illegally marketing an arthritis medication.
The crew was drilling 5,000 feet under the sea floor 41 miles off the Louisiana coast in April 2010 when they lost control of the well during its completion. They tested the pressure of the well, but misinterpreted the test results and underestimated the pressure exerted by the flow of oil or gas up the well. Had the results been properly interpreted, operations would have ceased.
Mr. Vidrine and Mr. Kaluza were negligent in their reading of the kicks of gas popping up from the well that should have suggested that the Deepwater Horizon crew was fast losing control of the ill-fated Macondo well, according to their indictment, and they failed to act or even communicate with their superiors. “Despite these ongoing, glaring indications on the drill pipe that the well was not secure, defendants Kaluza and Vidrine again failed to phone engineers onshore to alert them to the problem, and failed to investigate any further,” the indictment said.
The indictment said they neglected to account for abnormal pressure test results on the well that indicated problems, accepting “illogical” explanations from members of the crew, which caused the “blowout of the well to later occur.”
In a statement, Mr. Kaluza’s lawyers said: “No one should take any satisfaction in this indictment of an innocent man. This is not justice.”
Bob Habans, a lawyer for Mr. Vidrine, called the charges “a miscarriage of justice.”
“We cannot begin to explain or understand the misguided effort of the United States attorney and the Department of Justice to blame Don Vidrine and Bob Kaluza, the other well site leader, for this terrible tragedy.”
Several government and independent reports over the last two years have pointed to sloppy cement jobs in completing the well or the poor design of the well itself as major reasons for the spill. But none of the three was indicted in connection with those problems.
Mr. Rainey was a far more senior executive, one who was known around Houston and the oil world as perhaps the most knowledgeable authority on Gulf oil and gas deposits. According to his indictment, Mr. Rainey obstructed Congressional inquiries and made false statements by underestimating the flow rate to 5,000 barrels a day even as millions were gushing into the Gulf.
In BP Indictments, U.S. Shifts to Hold Individuals Accountable
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