On the first anniversary of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP Plc on Wednesday sued Cameron International Corp for negligence, because a blowout preventer made by Cameron failed to avert the catastrophe.

In a complaint filed in the federal court in New Orleans, BP said Cameron should be ordered to pay its share of any liability the British company might face under a 1990 federal law governing oil pollution.

Eleven people died when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded. About 4.9 million barrels, or more than 200 million gallons, of oil later flowed out of a subsurface BP well. BP has incurred tens of billions of dollars of liabilities from the disaster.

“The blowout preventer failed to work and perform the function it was designed and manufactured to perform — i.e., to secure the well,” BP said in the complaint. “The blowout preventer was flawed in design, and alternative designs existed that did not have these flaws.”

Scott Amann, a spokesman for Houston-based Cameron, was not immediately available for comment. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York and Jeremy Pelofsky in Washignton, D.C.; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Source: Reuters