NEW ORLEANS (REUTERS) - An engineer charged with obstructing justice in connection with the 2010 BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico was found guilty on one count by a federal jury on Wednesday, officials said.

Former BP Plc employee Kurt Mix, 52, had faced two counts of obstruction for deleting hundreds of messages he exchanged with his supervisor and a contractor in the weeks after the spill.

He was part of a team that scrambled to find a way to plug the Macondo well and figure out how much oil was leaking into the sea in what became the worst offshore disaster in US history.