BP Plc. has reached an estimated 7.8 billion dollar deal with businesses suing the company over the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on 2010 according to what the company stated on Friday, but the giant company of oil still faces claims by the U.S. government, Gulf States and drilling partners.
Carl Barbier -U.S. District Judge- said that the proposed terms of the class settlement would be submitted to court for approval, as he stated in an order made three days before the case had been due to go to trial.
He had already delayed the start of the trial to allow the negotiation of Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee which represents fisherman and businesses whose livelihoods were damaged by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon rig and the massive oil spill from the Macondo well.
Lawyers for the committee, Stephen Herman and James Roy, said that the settlement would compensate hundreds of thousands of victims, as Reuters stated.
BP also said that the cost of the proposed settlement would be around $7.8 billion, including a commitment of $2.3 billion to help in resolving loss claims related to the Gulf seafood industry.
The company said that the proposed settlement was not an admission of liability, and that BP would assign to the plaintiffs some of its claims against Transocean and Halliburton.
The explosion – happened on April 20th 2012 – caused eleven people to be killed in the, and 4.9 million barrels of oil spewed from the mile-deep well in by far the worst offshore U.S. oil spill.
So, the settlement is expected to remove a significant portion of the complex case, but it would not put an end to BP’s exposure.
