posted on September 03, 2010 01:11
Florida developer St. Joe Co. has filed a lawsuit against another Houston-based company related to the Gulf oil spill.
The St. Joe Co. said late Thursday it has filed a lawsuit against M-I SWACO for its role in the April 20 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf.
M-I SWACO was the drilling fluid contractor for the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that exploded, resulting in the largest oil spill in U.S. history.
The lawsuit was filed in the Superior Court for the State of Delaware, New Castle County, and charges M-I SWACO with gross negligence in the performance of its duties.
“We believe that M-I SWACO’s reckless behavior in connection with its management of the drilling fluid program at the Deepwater Horizon played a significant role in this epic disaster,” William A. Brewer III, partner at Bickel & Brewer and lead counsel for St. Joe, said in a written statement.
According to the St. Joe Co. lawsuit, M-I SWACO was hired by BP Exploration & Production Inc. to ensure the proper composition, use and monitoring of drilling fluid, which are used to control well pressure. The lawsuit claims M-I SWACO failed to report a series of regulatory violations that should have led to a suspension of operations on the rig.
The lawsuit also alleges that M-I SWACO displaced the heavy drilling mud from the well with lighter seawater without confirming that doing so would not result in a blowout.
The lawsuit is the second legal action taken by St. Joe Co. since the Deepwater Horizon incident. St. Joe filed a suit against Halliburton Co. (NYSE: HAL) on Aug. 4.
In that lawsuit, St. Joe also charged Houston-based Halliburton with having been grossly negligent in the performance of its duties. Halliburton allegedly cemented the BP company's Macondo well that blew apart at the Deepwater Horizon project.
The St. Joe Co. owns 577,000 acres in Florida, 70 percent of which are within 15 miles of the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Since the incident, St. Joe said it has suffered a decline in its enterprise value, an interruption to its business and a decline in the value of its assets. The company’s stock price declined by more than 40 percent following the explosion, company officials said.
WaterSound, Fla.-based St. Joe (NYSE: JOE) is one of Florida’s largest real estate development companies and northwest Florida’s largest private landowner.
August 27th, 2010 | Houston Business Journal