Halliburton settles Gulf oil spill claims for $1.1B

Oilfield services provider Halliburton Co. said Tuesday that it had settled the majority of lawsuits filed against it for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Halliburton settled the claims for its role in the largest oil spill in United States waters for about $1.1 billion. The money will mostly go to fishermen and property owners affected by the spill.

{mosads}Halliburton’s responsibility for the explosion that killed 11 workers and the resulting spill has been highly contested over the last four years. The company was a contractor on the rig but said it was not responsible for the disaster. BP, the rig’s owner, sought to blame Halliburton and rig operator Transocean.

“This punitive and assigned claims settlement with Halliburton is a reasonable compromise of a highly contested issue — the level of responsibility of Halliburton and the degree of the alleged failures of Halliburton’s conduct,” Joe Rice, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said in a statement.

Halliburton was accused of completing sub-par cement work on the Macondo well that Deepwater Horizon was drilling at the time of the accident.

In its own statement, Halliburton did not take any responsibility for the incident.

Transocean has settled some lawsuits against it for $1.4 billion. BP has paid $28 billion, though it still faces more liabilities.

The Tuesday settlement does not resolve cases that states have filed against Halliburton.

Pending court approval of the settlement, the money will be placed in a trust to be overseen by an administrator.