BP to pay US government $20.8b fine for Gulf oil disaster
Apr 5, 2016 11:21:23 GMT -6
Mystic Wanderer, Glencairn, and 1 more like this
Post by Rickster on Apr 5, 2016 11:21:23 GMT -6
SOURCE:
So after it's all over there seems to be no way to quantify the negative effects of the spill. The government has even stopped testing by LSU shortly after spill because they didn't have government approval.
I wonder if anyone thinks this is about money, and those evil oil companies never pay enough. Or is it about the federal government getting 5.5 billion in fines and the states and local governments getting the remainder 15.3 billion. It's quite alright we meaning citizens will just pay the fine at the pump, while government still gets an additional min.50 cents a gallon tax on the same gas.
"A Federal judge has approved the $20.8 bn settlement for BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. This fine will account for civil claims against the company set forth by the Department of Justice and five Gulf states. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch previously called the settlement “the largest with a single entity in American history."
n September 2014, a federal judge has called major oil company BP (British Petroleum) “reckless”, and oil services giants Transocean and Halliburton “negligent” following the major oil spill of 2010. The US District Judge Carl Barbier has ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” was responsible for the 11 lives which were lost and the 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 cubic meters).
"BP has reportedly already spent $28 billion on cleanup and compensation, but their measures were nowhere near as effective as predicted. If those figures seem absurdly high, then you need to understand the scale at which BP operates. The company has revenues on the order of hundreds of billions, while their net profit was generally around $10 billion – so the fine is basically their profit for a couple of years. The company reported a net loss of almost $8 billion in 2015, but this includes the cleaning money and a part of the fine. They had several years to prepare for this, and while other companies would have been completely dismantled by such a punishment, BP seems to be able to land on is feet."
n September 2014, a federal judge has called major oil company BP (British Petroleum) “reckless”, and oil services giants Transocean and Halliburton “negligent” following the major oil spill of 2010. The US District Judge Carl Barbier has ruled that BP’s “gross negligence” was responsible for the 11 lives which were lost and the 4.9 million barrels (210 million US gal; 780,000 cubic meters).
"BP has reportedly already spent $28 billion on cleanup and compensation, but their measures were nowhere near as effective as predicted. If those figures seem absurdly high, then you need to understand the scale at which BP operates. The company has revenues on the order of hundreds of billions, while their net profit was generally around $10 billion – so the fine is basically their profit for a couple of years. The company reported a net loss of almost $8 billion in 2015, but this includes the cleaning money and a part of the fine. They had several years to prepare for this, and while other companies would have been completely dismantled by such a punishment, BP seems to be able to land on is feet."
So after it's all over there seems to be no way to quantify the negative effects of the spill. The government has even stopped testing by LSU shortly after spill because they didn't have government approval.
SOURCE:
"The BP oil spill was gushing in late May 2010 when LSU graduate student Xuan Chen found himself on an Alabama beach collecting acrobat ants.
Chen was one in an army of scientists probing an urgent public question: Was the spill destroying the Gulf of Mexico's ecology? Chen's ants would help provide an answer, but they never made it to the lab. A U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service official confronted Chen at the beach and confiscated the ants, because the study wasn't approved by the official federal-BP response."
"The BP oil spill was gushing in late May 2010 when LSU graduate student Xuan Chen found himself on an Alabama beach collecting acrobat ants.
Chen was one in an army of scientists probing an urgent public question: Was the spill destroying the Gulf of Mexico's ecology? Chen's ants would help provide an answer, but they never made it to the lab. A U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service official confronted Chen at the beach and confiscated the ants, because the study wasn't approved by the official federal-BP response."
"Out of the settlement money, $5.5 billion will go toward penalties incurred under the Clean Water Act, most of the money will be given to five states — Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas — and 400 local government entities to cover damages from the spill.
