Transocean files suit against BP in Deepwater Horizon case

Transocean Offshore Deepwater Drilling Inc. (TODDI), a subsidiary of Transocean Ltd. (NYSE: RIG) (SIX: RIGN), today filed a motion for summary judgment in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana requesting the court to compel BP to honor its contractual obligation to defend, indemnify and hold harmless Transocean for damages associated with BP’s failure to contain flow from its Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

According to Transocean its contract with BP for the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig contains “industry-standard reciprocal indemnity provisions that apportion risk and quantify liabilities between the two companies. In the contract, which was signed in 1998 and extended several times including in 2009, BP agreed to ‘defend, release, protect, indemnify and hold harmless’ Transocean for any and all fines, penalties and damages associated with environmental pollution originating from the well ‘without limit and without regard to the cause or causes’ including negligence, ‘whether such negligence be sole, joint, active passive or gross.’ “

Transocean asserts that BP has refused to honor its contractual obligations to Transocean stemming from the Macondo well incident in April of 2010.  It says that  “BP instead filed suit against Transocean on the one-year anniversary of the incident, alleging that Transocean personnel — including those who lost their lives in the incident — had willful and callous disregard for the welfare of their colleagues and the environment. Transocean has honored its contractual indemnity obligations to BP nonetheless.”

Nick Deeming, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Transocean says that  BP’s posture “constitutes a direct threat to the sanctity of contracts and to the economic underpinnings of an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone.”

“This motion is about more than just two companies,” Mr. Deeming continued. “It is about the future of the contract drilling industry at large. If BP truly intends to make things right, it must either voluntarily or by the order of the court honor all of its contracts – not just the ones that serve its convenience or financial purposes.”

According to the filed motion, BP has cited “ongoing investigations” and BP’s own “allegations” of gross negligence on the part of Transocean as justification for BP’s refusal to honor its contractual promises. The motion also asserts that after months of discovery and more than 200 witness depositions, it is clear that no evidence of gross negligence by Transocean exists.

You can read the brief HERE