BP Agrees to Pay $18.7 Billion in Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Suit

[DonViejo]

Source: New York Times

The Gulf Coast states and the federal government have reached a tentative settlement with BP for the British oil company to pay $18.7 billion over 18 years, to compensate for damages from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, state officials said Thursday.

“This is a landmark settlement,” Gov. Robert Bentley of Alabama said. “It is designed to compensate the state for all the damages, both environmental and economic.”

The settlement covers suits filed by Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Florida and Alabama as well as the federal government.

Read more: http://p.nytimes.com/email/re?location=4z5Q7LhI+KVBjmEgFdYACPLKh239P3pghsgJi7Tf9Wh1sHZhwo1UEUHfGiqKlpq47rtRJSgSPXQucILGyHqiU0fE3JQwGLf+JsPzQgkTr1d6QebkYnGfsSexDwkgMzG4/bnSb6hJHoxqTQtvdCcKCb5tslXEmsPahb45ySPiCYtLVfkzFl2B6DbK5f07qKqB&campaign_id=132&instance_id=59386&segment_id=74339&user_id=5fc2acda8f5f8895cc85c5a3fb57458e&regi_id=57435284

[d_legendary1]

1. So all the plaintiffs are red states. Bummer.

That means more tax breaks for BP as well.

[Sunlei]

5. gulf coast states. 300,000 gulf oil wells and those states have the worse infastructure in America.

Who knows what they spent the revenue on? not schools, not roads.

100 years of easy oil wells and those gulf states didn't seem to directly benefit.

[dixiegrrrrl]

6. The tax breaks are courtesy of the Federal Gov't...

The permission to drill is courtesy of the Federal Gov't.

The penalties of pollution and dead fish and animals...THAT's for the locals to bear.

[cstanleytech]

10. Ya but how many of the locals voted for people who voted yes to allow

offshore drilling? But anyway thats not important, whats important that this is imo a piss poor settlement that wont really go anywhere near repairing the damage because its really is something that will be effecting the coast for decades probably.

[dixiegrrrrl]

12. The real question is how much of the money will the states spend responsibly?

Alabama receives $2.3 billion of BP settlement, with $1 billion paid to the state for economic damages
( read: hotels and resorts on the beaches)
and $1.3 billion earmarked for coastal restoration projects.

Earlier settlement money went, in part, to the resorts and hotels on the beaches, and to tourism ads.

Mississippi to receive nearly $2.2 billion in compensation as a result of Deepwater Horizon settlement with BP.

Jindal of Louisiana has already mis-spent prior settlement money.

[cstanleytech]

13. Oh there is no doubt some of it atleast will be misspent.

Notice I said atleast, the odds are (imo) that its going to be most if not all.

[NV Whino]

2. Until they decide not to... again.

[Sunlei]

3. wow does that make 40 billion in damages? good thing President O demanded the camera on the wellhead

If not for his swift actions everything would have been locked in the courts for decades.

Like ALL the other huge oil disasters.

[dixiegrrrrl]

8. Don't forget BP was caught falsifying the camera feed.

Astute camera watchers realized BP had put a looped image of the camera, in an attempt to hide how much worse the leak was getting.
All hell broke loose and they were forced to revert back to real time images.

I watched the video feed for days, down here. It was sickening.

[Sunlei]

11. probably was typical of Oil Corps to lie to the public. A great thing President Obama was in office.

Also a good thing for BP that science can now test blobs of oil and tell where they came from.

That's what the court problem is now, people sue BP for some oil and the science proves its from another of the thousands of old leaky capped wellheads in the Gulf or spills from ships.

[hobbit709]

4. Over 18 years? Fuck that, it didn't take them 18 years to fuck up the Gulf.

[dixiegrrrrl]

7. And no mention they fought that penalty for years

and will continue to try to with the states involved.

BP is so very high on my Ayra list.

[Sunlei]

9. I hate to defend an oil corp, but they have paid out multi billions really fast.

Halliburton was to Pay $1.1 Billion for their crappy wellhead work and I bet they haven't even paid that 'settled fine' yet.

The Gulf is ruined anyway, there are thousands of old capped, sea water rusting wells out there and no law to fix those.

[dixiegrrrrl]

30. Actually, BP hired Ken Fienberg to "screen" the claims

and that materially slowed down the payment rate to the extent that many people missed the payment time line.

There were many complaints against Feinberg for the way he handled the BP payout, including conflict of interest.:

BP is currently paying Feinberg's six-lawyer Washington, D.C., firm, Feinberg Rozen, a flat fee of $1,250,000 a month for labor and overhead costs, but the full details of compensation are unknown.[15] Feinberg has come under harsh criticism[16] from public interest groups for refusing to disclose the amount of his compensation or the details of his arrangement with the company.[17]

On December 6, 2010, the Center for Justice & Democracy (CJ&D) sent a letter[18] to Robert Dudley, the CEO of BP, concerning "serious new issues raised about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest related to the administration of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility." In the letter, CJ&D pointed out actions taken by Feinberg in the administration of the compensation fund that point to serious conflicts of interest:

"Mr. Feinberg, employed by BP, has decided on his own authority that all claims recipients must release all companies who caused this disaster from any and all legal responsibility, no matter how grossly negligent they were. This sweeping release, which assigns victims’ claims to BP, benefits only one actor: BP – the company that happens to pay Mr. Feinberg's salary."

In January 2011, Judge Barbier, the federal judge over the oil spill litigation, after hearing evidence and arguments of the attorneys, ruled that Kenneth Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim to be so. Feinberg had been telling victims he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.

The letter also criticized Feinberg's lack of transparency around compensation:

"Despite repeated calls for the release of documents establishing the formal relationship between BP and Feinberg Rozen, as well as its subcontractors who are reviewing and adjudicating claims, almost nothing has been publicly released. And now we learn, as reported by Reuters on November 22, 2010, that BP and Feinberg Rozen consider their arrangement 'verbal,' i.e., they have not committed to writing the firm’s compensation arrangement so there can be no public examination of it. Is the public to believe that there is no paper evidence at all documenting a $10 million per year financial arrangement between BP and Feinberg Rozen? What about the contracts between BP, Feinberg Rozen and the subcontractors who are advising and adjudicating claims and also being paid directly by BP? Surely these contracts must be in writing and released. This failure to release the terms of all these financial arrangements under circumstances of tremendous historic and public significance is simply unacceptable."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Feinberg

[hobbit709]

28. Sure thing! And you joined today just to defend them out of the goodness in your heart.

Enjoy your short stay.

[JudyM]

14. And some of us are still not going to eat gulf seafood for many years as a result

... And the loss of marine life to the ecosystem as well as a moral issue... How is that loss compensated?

[L0oniX]

15. Should be at least 3 times that amount.

[L0oniX]

27. Enjoy your stay.

[hobbit709]

29. BP Spammer didn't last long.

[dixiegrrrrl]

31. ole "name removed" shows up here a lot...

[PSPS]

16. LOL. $18 billion over 18 years = $1 billion a year (about 1 week's net profit.)