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BP will be fined another $18 billion
According to the conclusion of a special commission of the US administration published yesterday, which is responsible for eliminating the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a new leak of hydrocarbons discovered a day earlier in the area of the emergency well is “natural” in nature and is not related to the installation of another plug. However, British BP's joy in the absence of technical problems at the moment may be overshadowed. As the US Department of Justice recalled yesterday, according to the Clean Water Act of 1970, for every barrel of oil that ends up in the sea through the fault of a company, a fine of $4.3 thousand is imposed. Thus, taking into account the current volumes of leakage (since the accident in more than 4 million barrels of oil ended up in the ocean), the fine could reach almost $18 billion.The head of the rescue operation in the disaster zone, Tad Allen, hastened to reassure the public yesterday: the hydrocarbon leak discovered three kilometers from the damaged well was unlikely to have arisen due to the installation of a plug. According to him, such spills periodically occur in nature, and in this particular case it could well have been overlooked against the backdrop of a colossal disaster. However, experts still have a number of concerns. In particular, regarding the “anomaly” several hundred meters from the wellhead, as well as bubbles of gas and oil oozing from under the plug. Experts note that if these “anomalies” are a consequence of damage to the wellbore, then a significant number of new small leaks can soon be expected to appear.
The development of events in such a scenario would be extremely unfavorable for BP. The fact is that yesterday it became known about a new multi-billion dollar fine that could be imposed on the company in accordance with the Clean Water Act. The possibility of applying the provisions of this act to a British corporation was announced in the American Department of Justice. Let us recall that after the accident, BP accepted responsibility for what happened and pledged to pay all “legal and objectively verifiable claims.” The White House perceived this unequivocally - the corporation will pay for everything. The company really did not skimp on all kinds of payments and even agreed, although not without pressure from the United States administration, to fully finance a special compensation fund for victims of the accident. In addition, BP has already spent almost $4 billion on operations to clean up the bay, drilling additional wells and numerous attempts to fix the leak.
However, all this was spent by BP without court decisions. Moreover, under the law on oil pollution, the corporation's expenses could be limited to $75 million. It is worth noting that in May, Democratic senators twice tried to amend the legislation, according to which the amount of liability should have increased to $10 billion, but both times the Republicans voted against such changes, and Barack Obama then harshly criticized them, accusing them of lobbying the interests of oil corporations to the detriment of ordinary taxpayers. The American authorities were not going to give up. “BP says it will pay for this accident. Nonsense. They will not pay anything beyond what is required by law. That's why we can't let them off the hook,” Democratic Senator Nelson said two months ago. Now the company can be held liable under a specific legal act. Unlike the 1990 Oil Pollution Act, the Clean Water Bill, which dates back to the 1970s, has no cap on payments. If we take into account that for each barrel that ends up in US territorial waters, according to the law, you will have to pay 4.3 thousand dollars, then BP faces the bleak prospect of losing about another 18 billion dollars, because more than 4 million have already been spilled in the Gulf of Mexico barrels of oil. The company's House of Representatives hastened to recall that last year it earned approximately the same amount.
At the same time, it cannot be said that BP remains completely defenseless in the face of new requirements. First of all, it is worth noting that today there is no consensus on the volume of the leak, and in court the company will fight for every barrel. In 1989, when the Exxon Valdis tanker sank off the coast of Alaska, American authorities demanded payment of $5 billion. However, Exxon's lawyers managed to reduce the amount to $1 billion. In addition, the Clean Water Act conflicts with the oil pollution law. The latter states that the company responsible for the oil spill only bears the costs of directly cleaning up the affected areas.