(CNN) -- Transocean Deepwater Inc. will pay the
second-largest environmental fine in U.S. history for its role in the
deadly 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Justice Department said Thursday.
The company was sentenced
to pay $400 million and other penalties after it pleaded guilty in a
Louisiana federal court Thursday to violating the Clean Water Act by its
illegal conduct leading to the disaster, Attorney General Eric Holder
said.
Eleven workers were
killed when the Transocean oil rig exploded. The blast and ensuing fire
damaged the rig, causing 4.9 million barrels of oil to spill into the
Gulf, according to a 2011 report by the National Commission on the BP
Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.
The nation's largest environmental crime penalty was the $4 billion paid by BP Exploration and Production Inc.
for its role in the disaster, federal authorities said. BP contracted
Transocean to do the drilling and had BP officials on the rig.
"Transocean's guilty plea
and sentencing are the latest steps in the department's ongoing efforts
to seek justice on behalf of the victims of the Deepwater Horizon
disaster," said Holder.
Most of the $400 million will be used to restore and rebuild the Gulf coast region, authorities said.
"The Deepwater Horizon explosion was a senseless tragedy that could have been avoided," Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer
said in a statement. "With today's guilty plea, BP and Transocean have
now both been held criminally accountable for their roles in this
disaster."
U.S. District Judge Jane
Triche Milazzo of the Eastern District of Louisiana accepted
Transocean's guilty plea, which it agreed to in a deal with the
government in January.
In its plea, Transocean
admitted that its crew on the Deepwater Horizon rig was acting at the
direction of BP's well site leaders and were "negligent in failing to
investigate fully clear indications that the Macondo well was not secure
and that oil and gas were flowing into the well," the Justice
Department said.
The Macondo well was the source of the oil spill.
Under the plea
agreement, Transocean was also sentenced to five years of probation, the
maximum term of probation under law, the Justice Department said.
A separate proposal for a
civil consent decree is pending before U.S. District Judge Carl J.
Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana, and that proposal would impose a record $1 billion civil Clean Water Act penalty, the Justice Department said.
Workers clean a beach in South Pass, Louisiana, in May 2010 after the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill.
