A federal appeals court on Wednesday rejected BP and Anadarko Petroleum’s efforts to evade billions of dollars in fines for Clean Water Act violations for the millions of barrels of oil that spewed from their well in the 2010 Gulf disaster.

The opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirms a lower court ruling that found oil giants, as co-owners of the fated Macondo Well, liable.

BP and Anadarko had sought to shift blame onto Transocean, which owned the riser. That equipment connects the well to the rig at the surface, and BP and Anadarko’s argument was that the oil that ended up in the Gulf was released from the riser; therefore, they were not to blame.

But the appeals court ruling rejected that argument and found that there is “no dispute” that the oil was discharged from the well, which BP and Anandarko affirm they were owners of.

Circuit Judge Fortunato Benavides writes in the opinion: