Shit may roll downhill but oil gushes upward

Transocean wants BP to have to pay their fines too.

In court papers filed Friday, Transocean asserts that any damages it is ordered to pay are BP’s responsibility to cover because BP has admitted to misleading the U.S. government about the amount of oil that flowed after the Macondo well blowout.

A finding of gross negligence against Transocean would open it up to punitive damages. But the company claims BP would be on the hook for that money because of its guilty plea to obstructing the Congressional investigation of the April 20, 2010 disaster.

A BP spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Transocean said BP’s undersea well would have been capped sooner had it not been for BP’s misrepresentations to the government, and because of that Transocean doesn’t believe it should have to pay for the harm to the Gulf Coast caused by the oil.

“BP’s fraud was the proximate, intervening, and superseding cause of the well continuing to flow until mid-July 2010,” Transocean alleges in the filing in federal court in New Orleans.