HOUSTON, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Oil services company Halliburton said it's shielded from some claims made in response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010 as part of a settlement deal.
The company, which provided the cement used to cap the Macondo well that failed and led to the spill, announced it reached a $1.1 billion settlement in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.
The agreement shields the company from compensatory damages to members of a claim against BP in 2012 and from damages associated with the commercial fishing industry as a result of the incident, the company said Tuesday.
A cascading series of failures led to Macando's failure, which caused the BP-leased Transocean rig Deepwater Horizon to catch fire and eventually sink. The incident led to the worst offshore incident of its kind in the history of the oil industry and left 11 rig workers dead.
BP in 2012 claimed Halliburton destroyed test results regarding cement used to seal the well beneath the rig. Halliburton said the charges are baseless, though a report from U.S. regulators determined the blowout that led to the explosion that sunk the rig was in part because of a faulty cement barrier.
Halliburton officials testified last year they were aware of issues with cement, but denied those issues played a role in a 2010 spill.
