NEW ORLEANS – More than three years after the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the methods that BP employed during its 86-day struggle to plug its blown-out well will be the focus of a trial resuming Monday.

BP insists it was properly prepared to respond to the disaster, but plaintiffs’ attorneys will argue the London-based global oil company could have capped the well much sooner if it hadn’t ignored decades of warnings about the risks of a deep-water blowout.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers, who are teaming up with attorneys for the five Gulf states and two of BP’s contractors for the second phase of the trial, also say BP repeatedly lied to federal officials and withheld information about the volume of oil that was flowing from the well

“It should pay the price for its choices. BP should be held accountable for the lengthy delay caused by its fraud,” they wrote in a pretrial court filing.

BP maintains that its spill preparations complied with every government requirement and met industry standards. But the April 20, 2010, blowout of its Macondo well a mile under the surface of the Gulf of Mexico 50 miles off the Louisiana coast presented “unforeseen challenges,” the company’s attorneys wrote.

The federal judge presiding over the case without a jury has set aside exactly 120 hours over 16 days for the trial’s second phase, which he divided into two segments.

The first part, lasting four days, focuses on BP’s efforts to seal the well.

The second segment, lasting 12 days, is designed to help U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier determine exactly how much oil spilled into the Gulf.

Under the Clean Water Act, a polluter can be forced to pay a maximum of either $1,100 or $4,300 per barrel of spilled oil. The higher maximum applies if the company is found grossly negligent, as the government argues BP should be.

But the penalties can be assessed at amounts lower than those caps. Congress passed a law dictating that 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties paid by BP must be divided among the Gulf states.