The USA Supreme Court rejected appeals from BP Plc and Anadarko Petroleum Corp., leaving intact a ruling that opens the companies to potentially billions of dollars in fines for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, Bloomberg said June 29.
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A federal appeals court a year ago upheld Barbier’s conclusion about BP’s and Anadarko’s liability under the Clean Water Act.
The April 20, 2010, Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion and Macondo oil well rupture killed 11 workers and caused the largest offshore environmental disaster in USA history, polluting large parts of The Gulf, killing marine wildlife and harming businesses.
The two companies have tried to avoid the penalties by blaming the spill on failed equipment owned by another company, Reuters reports.
Based on the amount of oil estimated to have been released, BP may be fined under the CWA by up to $13.7 billion and Anadarko faces more than $1 billion in penalties.
Overall, BP has incurred more than $42 billion in costs for the spill, including cleanup, fines and victim compensation.
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BP and Andarko had argued that the oil didn’t leak from the well itself but rather from the broken pipe underwater which was owned by Transocean (NYSE: RIG – news). BP and Anadarko had argued that only Transocean should be required to pay for CWA fines. If the Supreme Court had intervened, the ruling could have been delayed.
