A federal judge is temporarily blocking the enforcement of subpoenas that an independent U.S. investigative agency issued against offshore driller Transocean in connection with the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Under an order issued by a Houston-based federal district court, those subpoenas for information tied to the 2010 oil spill are at least temporarily stayed while federal judges consider whether to merge them with a broad class action lawsuit on the disaster.
The U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigations Board issued those five administrative subpoenas between Nov. 24, 2010 and April 7, 2011. Last month, the Justice Department filed a civil action against Transocean alleging that the company failed to sufficiently respond to 38 of 39 specific demands in those subpoenas.
An independent federal agency, the CSB has been probing the root causes of the April 20, 2010 explosion on Transocean’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, in response to a request from Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif. The agency has separately investigated scores of industrial accidents, including the lethal blast at BP’s Texas City refinery in 2005.
But the board’s authority to investigate the Deepwater Horizon disaster has been called into question. Transocean has argued that the agency does not have the power to probe offshore accidents and oil spills and asserted that most of the requested documents were already made available to the Interior Department and Coast Guard as part of a separate probe of the incident.
District Judge Lee Rosenthal stressed that it shouldn’t take long for the New Orleans-based federal court overseeing that class action suit to decide whether the subpoena request should be made part of that case.
“It is reasonable to anticipate that the delay will be short,” Rosenthal said in his Nov. 28 order. “The interests of judicial efficiency and economy are best served by granting this stay for the relatively short period anticipated for the (multi-district litigation) panel to decide.”
Judge blocks subpoenas against Transocean
Published on November 30th, 2011
Written by: Jennifer A. Dlouhy