With less than a week remaining before their big trial in New Orleans, BP and other defendant companies involved in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill have stepped up negotiations with plaintiffs’ lawyers in an effort to settle claims.
BP and supplier M-I Swaco, a Houston-based drilling mud supplier, agreed Friday to settle all claims with each other over the Deepwater Horizon explosion that led to the worst oil spill in U.S. history.
MOEX Offshore, a 10-percent owner in BP’s Macondo well, agreed Friday to pay the federal government and Gulf states $90 million to settle claims involving BP’s 2010 oil spill, which left hundreds of square miles of the Gulf of Mexico awash in crude oil. The settlement includes the largest Clean Water Act penalties ever recovered by the U.S. government.
Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and collapsed into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, wants to question one of BP’s well site leaders in preparation for the upcoming liability trial in New Orleans. But there is one problem with Transocean’s request: the BP employee in question says he is too sick to testify under oath, either in person or in writing.
BP Chief Executive Robert Dudley told investors in a recent meeting that BP is open to settling claims over its disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil spill ahead of its trial in New Orleans, which starts February 27, but only if it is satisfied with the terms.
Weatherford U.S. LP, a Swiss oilfield service company that built key parts of BP’s failed Macondo well, will not have to face civil or criminal penalties and punitive damages for its role in the deadly Deepwater Horizon explosion and Gulf of Mexico oil spill, U.S. District Judge Judge Carl Barbier said Friday.
We often hear about the BP oil spill’s impact on Gulf business – on jobs and peoples’ livelihoods and the general economy. But few things in the media capture the amazing miracle of life in the Gulf of Mexico being hammered by BP and other reckless offshore drillers as a speech given by marine zoologist and famed cinematographer Mike deGruy to a gathering at Mission Blue, a California-based oceanic exploration and conservation group.
Congressional representatives and municipal officials from the Gulf Coast are in Washington pushing for legislation that would direct billions of dollars in BP oil-spill fine money to the states harmed by the 2010 spill before time runs out.
In December we reported how BP wasn’t the only driller fouling the Gulf of Mexico with oil; 10 miles off the Louisiana coast and just a few miles away from BP’s blown-out Macondo well, which flooded the Gulf with 206 million gallons of oil in 2010, sits an offshore platform and 28 oil wells belonging to Taylor Energy Company of New Orleans that may have been leaking hundreds of gallons of oil everyday for seven years. Now an environmental watchdog group hopes a lawsuit it filed against Taylor Energy on Thursday will help put an end to the spill.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans said on Tuesday that BP must honor it contract with Halliburton and indemnify the company for third-party compensatory claims.
