BP to Pay $20 Billion for Deepwater Horizon Spill

A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service worker carries an oiled pelican from a nesting area in Barataria Bay, La., to a waiting boat. The pelican was transported to the Fort Jackson Oiled Wildlife Rehabilitation Center at for cleaning. Photo: US Coast Guard | FlickrCC.

The Deepwater Horizon fire and spill in 2010 killed 11 workers and dumped 11 million barrels of crude oil into the sea, fouling 1,300 miles of coastline. It was the largest oil spill in American waters. Since then BP has been ordered to pay $20 billion to resolve most of the outstanding claims against the company for the incident.

That money is on top of the $43.8 billion they’ve set aside to cover criminal and civil penalties related to the spill. BP has said that the pre-tax cost of the spill comes in at around $53.8 billion.

The money already paid has been used to help clean up the oil, help the families of the deceased workers, and to defray the loss of income experienced by thousands of fishermen and other workers who rely on the Gulf of Mexico for their living. According to Loretta Lynch, Attorney General of the United States, the new fines will be paid to federal and state governments, as well as 18 specific municipalities, over the next five years.

The new settlement includes $7.1 billion for natural resource damages, $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act fines, and another $4.9 billion in payments to Gulf states. It is the largest corporate settlement in U.S. history, and will launch one of the largest environmental restoration efforts in the world.

That’s part of the silver lining. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill has had an immensely negative impact on the lives of people on the coast and animals within the Gulf, which will likely be felt for generations.

The one other good thing to come of all this is that, since the spill, there have been safety and emergency overhauls for work in the Gulf, which is one of world’s largest offshore oil basins. That means the potential for more incidents like this will always be there, as long as oil is big business.