BP Deepwater Horizon fine capped at $13.8bn
Source: The Guardian
BP has won a partial victory in the US courts after a federal judge in New Orleans capped a potential fine for polluting the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 at $13.8bn (£9bn) rather than the feared $18bn. The exact scale of the financial penalty for causing the worst offshore pollution incident in American history will not be known for some time, but BP is confident it will be lower still.
BP has set aside only $3.5bn in its accounts to pay off the fine, and any figure in excess of this could force the company into selling off more assets to pay for it. But the London-based oil company’s shares rose 4% after it said in a statement: “BP believes that considering all the statutory penalty factors together weighs in favour of a penalty at the lower end of the statutory range.”
Judge Carl Barbier ruled late on Thursday in a New Orleans federal court that the Deepwater Horizon spill was 3.2m barrels, greater than the 2.4m barrels argued by BP but less than the 4.2m claimed by the US government. The decision leaves the oil group facing a maximum possible fine of $4,300 per barrel, or $13.8bn, under the Clean Water Act. This will be decided by a separate hearing to begin next week.
Barbier said BP’s response to the disaster was not grossly negligent, but stuck to an earlier judgement that the company was grossly negligent in the period leading up to the blowout of the Macondo well.
Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jan/16/bp-deepwater-horizon-spill-fine-cap-14bn
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