Halliburton, in Defamation Suit, Says BP Lied Before Oil Spill

Alleges a "cover up scheme" to conceal cutting corners to speed up well work

Halliburton is accusing BP of lying about the Deepwater Horizon oil rig before the 2010 Gulf oil spill and lying about Halliburton afterward in a suit filed Friday in Texas court. The day before the disaster, BP allegedly gave Halliburton bad info about where gas and oil pockets were in the well so cement work wouldn't be stalled, Bloomberg's Margaret Cronin Fisk explains. After the spill, BP said Halliburton's cement job was "a root cause of the blowout." So Halliburton is suing for "negligent misrepresentation, business disparagement and defamation," Reuters reports.

"The motive behind BP's intentional nondisclosure of the upper hydrocarbon zone is apparent -- profit and greed," Halliburton claims. If BP had told Halluburton where the second hydrocarbon zone was, Halliburton says it would have had to change its plans for the cement work, which would have cost BP millions of dollars. Halliburton calls BP's actions a "cover up scheme."

BP is also engaged in a legal battle with Transocean over who's to blame for the spill.

(Above, oil clean up in Louisiana in April, a year after the spill.)