Halliburton announced today that it will plead guilty to destroying critical evidence in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, in exchange for three years probation and a fine.

A presidential commission yesterday found that BP and Halliburton knew that the cement mixture used to seal the Macondo well before the oil spill had "repeatedly failed lab tests." You should probably grab some Halliburton shares while they're hot.

BP has released its internal investigative report on the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and — spoiler! — it "deflects attention away from BP," pinning more responsibility on Transocean and Halliburton. Maybe that's true? Or maybe it's just standard corporate PR.

The "BP squad," a group of federal investigators, are preparing a criminal probe of three companies involved in the Gulf oil spill: BP, Transocean, and everyone's favorite war profiteers, Halliburton. The companies' ties to regulators will be examined. [WaPo; Getty]

A new series of emails released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee reveals specific places where BP decided to cut costs and sacrifice safety—including an email describing the soon-to-explode rig as a "nightmare well."

It's been one month since the Deepwater Horizon oil rig blew up, and oil is still leaking at an astonishing rate. Entire state economies might be crushed, and whole ecosystems wiped out. So whose fault is it?

So it turns out that the widely-accepted figure of 5,000 barrels leaking every day into the Gulf is more like 25,000, and BP is accused of failing to use standard techniques to find an accurate number. Shocking! [NYT]