BP Said by U.S. Witness to Have Misled Macondo Well Regulators

BP Plc officials misled federal regulators about conditions at the Macondo well and forged ahead with “unsafe and dangerous” drilling operations before the fatal explosion that killed 11 rig workers and sent oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico, an expert witness said.

BP’s internal records for the Macondo project conflicted with numbers sent to drilling regulators and established a pattern of “consistent misreporting” of well pressures, Alan Huffman, a Houston-based petroleum geophysicist, testified for the U.S. government in a trial over claims tied to the 2010 Gulf spill. The fudged numbers allowed BP to continue drilling for oil, he said.