Trial begins over Gulf oil spill

Published: February 26. 2013 4:00AM PST

Protesters stand outside the federal courthouse Monday on the first day of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill trial in New Orleans. BP put profits ahead of safety and bears most of the blame for the disastrous 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a U.S. Justice Department attorney charged Monday at the opening of a trial that could result in the oil company and its partners being forced to pay tens of billions of dollars more in damages. The London-based oil giant acknowledged it made “errors in judgment" before the deadly blowout, but it also cast blame on the owner of the drilling rig and the contractor involved in cementing the well. It denied it was grossly negligent, as the government contended. The high-stakes civil case went to trial after attempts to reach an 11th-hour settlement failed. Eleven workers were killed when the Deepwater Horizon rig leased by the BP exploded on April 20, 2010. An estimated 172 millions of gallons of crude gushed into the Gulf over the three months that followed in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history. — The Associated Press
Gerald Herbert / The Associated Press

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