The hearing before a panel of judges in Boise, Idaho was to consider whether lawsuits from some 200 plaintiffs should be consolidated into one or several cases, and where the trial or trials should take place.

British energy giant BP argued in favor of Houston, Texas -- headquarters of the oil industry and where it has set up its control rooms to coordinate its response to what has been called America's worst environmental disaster.

"The better access to evidence is in Houston. The key evidences are by far in Houston," BP attorney Andrew Langan told a packed courtroom.

But the plaintiffs hit back that the case should be heard closer to locations hit hardest by the oil spill, such as Louisiana or Alabama, with New Orleans appearing to be their preferred option.

"We have a very special culture in New Orleans and our culture has been damaged," said attorney Russ Hermann, representing shrimpers, hotels, food processors and boat captains.

"And we would like the case there so that our people have hope, and so that the country and the world are focused where the damages occurred."

A decision is expected in around two weeks, but the 90-minute session gave lawyers a test run for the arguments they will make during legal proceedings that could stretch out for years.

Law professor Richard Nagareda said the seven federal judges of the Multidistrict Litigation Panel (MDL Panel) could in theory choose to send the sprawling oil-spill litigation to one judge in one federal US court.

"The panel may very well be inclined to choose a judge located around the Gulf Coast area," said Nagareda, a professor at Vanderbilt University.

US prosecutor Stephen Flynn backed the plaintiffs' argument to move the case to Louisiana, his jurisdiction.

"We are not a party to the case, but we were asked our opinion," he said. "We think that a case of this magnitude should be centralized geographically."

He argued that Louisiana offered "best access for the plaintiffs and witnesses, and most of the economic and natural damages were in Louisiana."

The hearing brought together a wide array of people and players linked to the disaster triggered by an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

Eleven people were killed in the explosion, which caused the platform to sink two days later. Since then, an estimated three to 5.2 million barrels (117.6 million to 189 million gallons) gushed out into the Gulf.

Joining BP in court were Transocean, which leased the rig to BP, Cameron International, which manufactured the blow-out preventer, the device which should have shut down the well but failed to work properly, and Halliburton, the oil services company which had finished cementing the well only 20 hours before the rig exploded.

Plaintiffs range from the families of the 11 workers killed in the explosion to Gulf fishermen whose catch has been contaminated by the spill, threatening them with financial ruin.

Attorney Elizabeth Cabraser, representing fishermen, oystermen and property owners, told AFP there was a strong argument for holding the trial in the affected Gulf states.

"It would be very difficult to explain to the average person why the case has been (heard) in the oil industry's headquarters hometown. People would have a hard time getting past that."

related report
Million dollar contest launched in US to clean oil spill
A US foundation that helped launch private spaceflight Thursday turned its gaze and pocketbook towards Earth, unveiling a 1.4-million-dollar contest to find new ways to clean up oil spills.

The year-long Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, named for the wife of Google chairman Eric Schmidt who put up the 1.4-million-dollar purse and the X Prize Foundation which is organizing the competition, kicks off Sunday.

Frustrated at watching "the messy, uncoordinated" attempts to mop up oil from the massive BP leak in the Gulf of Mexico using outdated technology, the contest aims to inspire new ways to clean up future spills, Schmidt said.

"With nearly 4,000 active drilling platforms in the Gulf alone, and more than 10,000 oil platforms across the globe and millions of barrels of oil being transported every day by tankers, it's not a question of 'if' there is another spill but 'when,'" she added.

She argued that "we need to come up with better ways to respond quickly and to minimize the harm we are causing to marine life, coastal wetlands and beaches, and to our livelihoods."

Teams will submit a blueprint for spill-fighting technology online on the website of the X Prize Foundation (xprize.org).

The foundation has run other "incentive competitions" with multi-million-dollar purses, including one in 2004 that saw Burt Rutan build and fly a private vehicle into space.

A panel of experts will evaluate the entries for feasibility, cost, how well they lend themselves to large scale deployment, efficiency and eco-friendliness among other criteria, and the field will be whittled down by mid-2011 to a few teams of finalists.

Those teams will put their inventions to the test in a head-to-head competition at the National Oil Spill Response Research and Renewable Energy Test Facility in New Jersey.

The teams will have to clean up oil-tainted water, and the winners will get at least one million dollars. Runners-up and third place teams will earn 300,000 and 100,000 dollars respectively.

X Prize Foundation chairman Peter Diamandis expects hundreds of entries to the competition which aims to "spur small teams with big ideas to solve big challenges."

Other X Prize competitions currently under way include one to land a robot on the moon, one to build a safe, affordable car that gets at least 100 miles per gallon and another to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.

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