The Financial Times reported on a U.S. investigation that claims that BP (BP) and Halliburton (HAL) knew that the cement used to seal the failed well was unstable.

The lawyers suing BP and Halliburton call this evidence a "game changer" and says it opens up the companies to penalties and court awards running into the billions of dollars.

The case rests on a finding by a U.S. federal panel that the cement used may have caused the fatal explosion on the Deepwater Horizon.

Vulcan Materials (NYSE: VMC), a maker of construction materials such as cement and asphalt, announced Q2 earnings yesterday evening. Although the company has a cool name -- come on, who doesn't think of Mr. Spock when reading about Vulcan Materials -- there wasn't a significant cool factor surrounding the Q2 numbers. Net income from continuing operations came in at 14 cents per share. The company made $1.27 per share from continuing businesses in the year-ago period.

Big drop, that is. Sales likewise headed south: the company booked revenues of roughly $722 million in the second quarter. Vulcan Materials had a top line of over $1 billion in Q2 2008.

CEMEX (NYSE:CX), Mexico's giant maker of cement, has quietly continued to grow both its income and its revenue through strategic acquisitions and market share expansion. Currently the world's biggest concrete producer by volume, with an annual volume of 2.6 billion cubic feet, CEMEX now operates in over 50 countries worldwide, and is looking for opportunities in China, Brazil, Russia and India. But even without operations in these rapidly growing countries, CEMEX posted a 3.5% global growth rate for the first half of 2006, earning a profit of over $1 billion on revenues of $8.6 billion. CEMEX is currently sitting on free cash flow of $2.5 billion.

According to an interview with CEO Lorenzo Zambrano in NYSE Magazine (October-November 2006), CEMEX has perfected the art of integrating recent acquisitions into CEMEX in order to achieve highly efficient results. Zambrano is particularly proud of CEMEX's efficiency in energy consumption. While energy cost of cement production rose 118% for the period 2001-2005, CEMEX's energy cost per ton increased only 11%, due in large measure to a relentless effort to curb inefficiencies in all aspects of production, delivery and inventory. Unlike other cement production companies, CEMEX runs its plants on petroleum coke, a solid fuel by-product of oil refining. Annual energy savings amount to $75 million.