A former BP Plc engineer was arrested and charged with trying to destroy evidence related to how much oil was spilling from the broken well in the Gulf of Mexico in April of 2010, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Kurt Mix, 50, was accused of trying to delete text messages between him and a supervisor that included sensitive internal BP information collected in real-time as BP tried to cap the well, the Justice Department said.

He was charged with two counts of obstruction of justice.

(Reporting By Jeremy Pelofsky; Editing by David Gregorio)

U.S. Engineer