(Image Source: ZME Science)

BY JIM FLINK

ANCHOR MEGAN MURPHY

Now the tables turn.
Three months after being accused of a cover-up in the Deepwater Horizon spill, BP now alleges, it’s Halliburton which has destroyed evidence, and it says it has a confession from a Halliburton employee to prove it.
The accusation sets up a courtroom battle between the oil giants in February.
Fox News has more.

“The giant oil company BP is accusing Halliburton of destroying key evidence about problems with the cement that was used in the oil well that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. They say the slurry did not plug the well. BP claims after that Halliburton's employees got rid of evidence.”

At the core of BP’s allegation? -- Halliburton’s slurry records, which have vanished.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster killed 11 workers, and created the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Xinhua notes, Halliburton has its own side of the story.
Which, no surprise here, places the blame on BP.

“Halliburton has argued that the cement mix it prepared and applied at the site was stable, while arguing that some of BP's choices, including the oil company's decision to use fewer so-called ‘centralizers’ to properly position pipe in the well, caused channels to form in the cement, allowing hydrocarbons to flow to the surface.”

China’s state-run Xinhua News reports, so far, BP has assumed all of the costs of the cleanup.

All the while, BP has said Halliburton should share in the blame.

And, Bloomberg notes, it may have a key ally in that claim -- a former Halliburton employee.

“Rickey Morgan, a Halliburton employee who conducted post-incident testing on Macondo cement slurry samples at the company’s lab in Duncan, Oklahoma, ‘testified under oath that he destroyed test results in order to keep the information from being ‘misinterpreted’ in ways adverse to Halliburton in litigation’...”

The allegations from BP, come three months after Halliburton alleged BP was the one to cover up details.

Newsy covered those events -- and we have a link to our coverage in our transcript section.