BP WILL PAY $20.8 BLN

BP reached a $20.8 billion civil settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and five Gulf states on Monday to resolve civil claims tied to the April 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident.

The global settlement resolves the governments' civil claims under the Clean Water Act and natural resources damage claims under the Oil Pollution Act, as well as economic damage claims brought by five Gulf states and local governments, the DOJ said.

The five states included in the settlement are Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.

The resolution is worth $20.8 billion and is the largest settlement with a single entity in the department's history.

BP must pay a $5.5 billion federal Clean Water Act penalty, plus interest, with 80 percent of those funds going towards restoration efforts in the Gulf region.

This fine is the largest civil penalty in the history of environmental law, the DOJ said.

The company will pay $8.1 billion in natural resource damages, including $1 billion BP has already committed to pay for early restoration.

Those funds are marked for joint use by the federal and state trustees to restore injured resources.

BP will also pay up to an additional $700 million, with some of those funds being accrued interest, to specifically address any later-discovered natural resource conditions that were unknown at the time of the agreement and to assist in adaptive management needs.

petroglobalnews.com

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