US Gulf spill fund pays out $5 bn in first year

24 sierpnia, 2011

Victims of BP\'s disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico have received more than $5 billion in compensation since a fund was set up a year ago, officials said.

The money has gone to 204,434 individuals and businesses, mainly in the five-state Gulf region: Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF) said Tuesday.

The compensation fund was created four months after the April 2010 explosion on BP\'s Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf caused the biggest maritime oil spill in history.

Set up by the Obama administration and financed by BP, the independent $20 billion fund operates on behalf of BP to meet its US legal obligations to compensate victims.

The GCCF processed about one million claims in its first year of operation, the fund said in a report.

It noted conflicting views with BP over who should be compensated for damages.

"BP has often assumed public positions concerning claimant eligibility criteria and damage calculation methodologies directly at odds with the findings and determinations of the GCCF," the fund said.

In early July, BP appeared to be looking to limit the payouts, filing a document with the GCCF stating that "the current economic data do not suggest that individual and business claimants face a material risk of future loss caused by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill."

The British oil giant is responsible for covering the costs of the cleanup, restoring the damage, paying huge environmental fines, and compensating people whose livelihoods were affected by the disaster.

Hundreds of miles of fragile coastal wetlands and beaches were contaminated and a third of the Gulf\'s rich US waters were closed to fishing after the April 20, 2010, explosion that killed 11 workers and sank the Deepwater Horizon.

By the time the well was capped 87 days later, 4.9 million barrels (206 million gallons) of oil had gushed out into the Gulf from the well, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

BP estimated in its second-quarter earnings report that the spill would ultimately cost $41.3 billion and warned of "significant uncertainty" surrounding the company\'s ultimate exposure.

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