British Petroleum’s Macondo oil well blew out April 20, 2010, and the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and eventually sank into the Gulf of Mexico.
Advertisement
“For the United States and the Gulf, in particular, this agreement will deliver a significant income stream over many years for further restoration of natural resources and for losses related to the spill”.
BP (BP.L) said it has reached an .7 billion settlement of damages claims from the USA government and five states after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico spill.
The settlement was executed by BP’s U.S upstream subsidiary, BP Exploration and Production (BPXP).
“Conservation Commission Executive Director Nick Wiley and Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Jon Steverson for their hard work on this agreement with BP.” Along with Florida, the $18.7 billion will be paid to the states of Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.
A federal judge’s recent rulings putting a potential $13.7 billion price tag on federal Clean Water Act violations helped motivate BP to negotiate a settlement, rather than to continue to fight the claims in court, Bloomberg reports.
Florida would also receive more than $1.25 billion from the natural resource damage claims and through the provisions of the RESTORE Act under the agreement in principle.
Exact allocation of the settlement is still to be determined.
Advertisement
It’s not possible to say whether the settlement amount is fair or not, particularly since a lot of the studies on the impacts of the BP oil disaster have not yet been publicly released, but instead have been held confidential pending future litigation.
