Four years later and oil apparently is still washing up on the shore. 

america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/9/2/halliburton-gulfsettlement.html

Halliburton agrees to $1.1B settlement for role in Gulf oil spill

Settlement absolves company of further punitive damages if its 'gross negligence' is found to have contributed to spill

September 2, 2014 6:58PM ET

Halliburton has reached a $1.1 billion settlement over its role in the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the worst in American history. 

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana must still approve the settlement, Halliburton said. The amount will be paid in three installments over the next two years, and will be kept in a trust until all appeals are resolved, the company said.

In April 2010, an explosion and blowout occurred at BP’s Macondo well, killing 11 workers and spilling millions of barrels of oil for months after the disaster. The full economic and environmental impact of the spill remains unknown.

Under the settlement, Halliburton is protected from further punitive damages, if the court rules in the future that the company had been negligent for its role in the blowout, said Mark McCollum, the company's chief financial officer.

If a federal judge found Halliburton’s gross negligence to be a major factor in the blowout, plaintiffs could choose to hold out for a larger settlement. In that case, Halliburton would most likely appeal the decision, which would further delay payments.Halliburton provided cementing services for BP’s well, and placed the “centralizers” responsible for stabilizing the drilled hole during cementing. The company said the spill was BP's fault because it had decided to use only six centralizers, which Halliburton said was an effort by BP to save “time and money.”The companies sued each other over which was responsible in 2011, and in October 2013 a former Halliburton manager, Anthony Badalamenti, plead guilty to accusations that he destroyed evidence related to the spill. Badalamenti, who was given one year of probation, said it was discovered after the spill that the use of fewer centralizers on the well made little difference, and he ordered the program manager to destroy the results of the simulation.