Cameron International Settlement: BP $250M and OFAC $1.4M

Cameron International Corporation has resolved two major legal matters through settlements: a $250 million payment to BP in December 2011 for the failure of the blowout preventer on the Deepwater Horizon rig, and a $1,423,766 settlement with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control in September 2021 over Russia-related sanctions violations. The sanctions conduct was uncovered by Schlumberger after it acquired Cameron in 2016.

The $250 Million BP Settlement

Cameron designed and built the blowout preventer installed on the Deepwater Horizon. When the Macondo well blew out on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and releasing an estimated 206 million gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico, the device failed to seal the well.¹

On December 16, 2011, Cameron and BP announced a $250 million agreement resolving all claims between the two companies. The payment went into the $20 billion trust BP had established for victims of the disaster. Insurers covered at least $170 million of the total, leaving Cameron responsible for roughly $50 million out of pocket.²³

Neither company admitted liability. Both attributed the explosion to “complex and interlinked causes” involving multiple parties. In exchange for the payment, BP agreed to indemnify Cameron against future claims under the Oil Pollution Act and for environmental damage. The indemnity did not extend to civil, criminal, or administrative fines and penalties that might come out of separate proceedings.¹³

Cameron’s then-CEO Jack Moore said the agreement “eliminates all significant exposure to historical and future claims related to this incident” and characterized any remaining court fines as not significant.²

The timing mattered. A federal non-jury trial to apportion fault for the disaster had been scheduled for February 2012. By settling in December, Cameron was out of the litigation before Judge Carl J. Barbier of the Eastern District of Louisiana assigned fault at 67% to BP, 30% to Transocean, and 3% to Halliburton. Cameron received no separate fault percentage.⁴

The Insurance Dispute That Followed

The $50 million that Cameron paid from its own funds became the subject of a second fight. Liberty Insurance Underwriters, Cameron’s excess insurer, refused to reimburse the amount. LIU argued that Cameron had an indemnification agreement with Transocean, and that LIU’s coverage sat above that Transocean obligation. Transocean, however, had refused to honor its indemnity, which pushed Cameron into suing both Transocean and LIU.⁵

In October 2014, Judge Barbier ruled for Cameron. He found that LIU had breached the policy, holding that Transocean’s indemnity did not currently “apply” because Transocean had refused to honor it, and that Cameron was not required to exhaust its claims against Transocean before LIU’s obligation was triggered.⁵

The Fifth Circuit affirmed the breach-of-contract ruling in November 2015, calling LIU’s reading of its policy unreasonable. It reversed the denial of Cameron’s request for attorney’s fees and sent that question back for further proceedings, and it certified a separate question to the Texas Supreme Court about whether an additional independent injury is required to bring a claim under Chapter 541 of the Texas Insurance Code.⁶

How the OFAC Case Came to Light

Schlumberger Limited agreed to acquire Cameron on August 25, 2015, in a deal valued at $14.8 billion, with the merger closing on April 1, 2016.⁷⁸ During post-merger integration, Schlumberger discovered that Cameron had been dealing with a sanctioned Russian energy company. Cameron notified OFAC in June 2017.⁹

The $1.4 Million OFAC Sanctions Settlement

OFAC announced the settlement on September 27, 2021. Between July 2015 and November 2016, four U.S.-person senior managers at Cameron, including a division president, two vice presidents of finance, and one senior manager, approved five contracts for Cameron Romania S.R.L., a Romanian subsidiary, to supply oil production and exploration goods to Gazprom-Neft Shelf. The goods were destined for the Prirazlomnaya Arctic offshore platform.⁹¹⁰

Gazprom-Neft Shelf is a wholly owned subsidiary of OJSC Gazprom Neft, which OFAC sanctioned in September 2014. Directive 4 of Executive Order 13662 restricts U.S. persons from providing goods, services, or technology in support of deepwater, Arctic offshore, or shale projects for listed Russian entities. Cameron’s own internal procedures required U.S.-based managers to sign off on contracts above certain dollar thresholds or with non-standard terms, and those approvals brought the transactions into the reach of U.S. sanctions law.⁹

Penalty Factors

OFAC classified the case as “non-egregious” but determined Cameron had not voluntarily self-disclosed the violations, despite its 2017 notifications. The chief aggravating factor was the involvement of senior U.S. managers who OFAC said “knew or should have known” that the contracts violated Directive 4. On the mitigating side, OFAC credited Cameron’s cooperation, including detailed document production, responses to information requests, and tolling agreements that extended the statute of limitations.⁹

OFAC noted that Cameron’s pre-existing compliance procedures had not been built to flag the specific risk of U.S.-person involvement in foreign subsidiary transactions, which was the gap that allowed the violations. After discovery, Schlumberger identified employees who should not participate in Russia-related activities and enrolled them in a formal recusal acknowledgement system, assigned a senior compliance manager to fold Cameron into Schlumberger’s compliance program, introduced automatic blocks on any order referencing Russia in the “bill to,” “ship to,” or end-user fields, and added software requiring identification of end-users for all transactions.

The Companion Schlumberger Rod Lift Settlement

OFAC announced a separate $160,000 settlement the same day with Schlumberger Rod Lift, Inc., another Schlumberger subsidiary. That case involved a different sanctions program: between December 2015 and April 2016, three U.S. employees helped route oilfield equipment to Sudan through a Canadian subsidiary and a Chinese joint venture, in violation of the now-repealed Sudanese Sanctions Regulations. It was also classified as non-egregious and not voluntarily self-disclosed.⁹

Where Things Stand Now

Schlumberger rebranded as SLB in October 2022. In July 2023, the company said it would halt all shipments of products and technology into Russia from its global facilities, extending earlier restrictions that had applied only to shipments from the U.S., U.K., EU, and Canada.¹¹ Russia represented roughly 4% of SLB’s worldwide revenue in 2024, down from 5% in 2023, or about $1.4 billion.¹²

A November 2025 Forbes investigation reported that SLB continued operations in Russia after new U.S. sanctions took effect in January 2025 prohibiting American citizens from providing oilfield services to Russian entities. Documents from February 2025 indicated the company had transferred proprietary drilling technology designs to Russian manufacturers. SLB’s CEO said the company was reviewing the new sanctions and argued that its voluntary steps were aligned with the restrictions.¹² SLB said it had made no new investments in Russia, was not deploying new technology there, and had seen its Russian workforce, contracts, and revenue decline since 2022.¹¹

1
BBC News. Cameron International Settles With BP Over Gulf Oil Spill
2
CBS News. BP Gets $250M From Maker of Blowout Preventer
3
The Washington Post. Cameron Settles With BP on Oil Spill Claims
4
Courthouse News Service. Judge Finds BP Grossly Negligent for Deepwater Horizon Disaster
5
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Louisiana. Cameron Int’l Corp. v. Liberty Ins. Underwriters, Inc.
6
FindLaw. In Re: Deepwater Horizon, No. 14-31321
7
Schlumberger Investor Center. Schlumberger Announces Agreement to Acquire Cameron
8
Schlumberger Investor Center. Schlumberger Completes Merger With Cameron
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U.S. Department of the Treasury. OFAC Recent Actions
10
Torres Trade Law. OFAC Sanctions Enforcement Actions Digest
11
SLB. FAQs for SLB in Russia
12
Forbes. Houston Oil Giant SLB Still Enabling Russian Oil Production Despite US Sanctions