ATP Oil & Gas Corp. is accused of discharging oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and then adding chemicals to mask the oil's presence, the U.S. Justice Department said.
The driller and its affiliate, ATP Infrastructure Partners L.P., failed to maintain and properly operate a wastewater treatment system on its floating oil-and-gas production platform, the ATP Innovator, the Justice Department said in a civil complaint filed in a federal court in Louisiana.
As a result, excess oil was discharged into the ocean, while an unauthorized chemical dispersant was added to the wastewater discharge to hide the oil, the agency alleged.
A representative from ATP wasn't immediately available for comment.
The Justice Department said the company used the dispersant from at least Oct. 2010 to March 2012, adding it to the outfall pipe with a concealed metal tube. The connection between the pipe and the metal tube were located downstream of the sample collection point, making the dispersant undetectable in samples required to show compliance with the Clean Water Act, the agency said.
The violations were discovered in a March inspection of the facility by the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.
ATP filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August, hit by the rising costs associated with its deep-water drilling projects in the Gulf of Mexico. The company blamed its financial woes in part on the drilling an put in place in the area after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. It resumed drilling in the Gulf last year.
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