BP Slapped With Biggest Environmental Fine in US History  

BP may be one of the largest and wealthiest corporations on the planet but that doesn’t make them immune from being slapped with sky-high fines from the US justice department. In the wake of the devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill that saw the company’s Deepwater Horizon rig spew 4.2 million barrels of crude into the open ocean, the oil giant has been hit with an $18.7 billon fine. As well as causing the deaths of 11 civilians the spill also had a hugely damaging impact on local marine life, as well as communities residing on the Gulf coast from Louisiana to Florida.

BP forced to clean up its mess with cash

The penalty was issued in accordance with the Clean Water Act and pursued by the US justice department, as well as the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Florida. All six parties sued BP for damages that were overlooked in an earlier settlement which saw BP fork out cash to businesses and citizens affected by what is regarded as the worst offshore spill in American history.

Judge Carl Barbier maintained that BP has been “grossly negligent” when it came to managing the risk of a spill. This description landed the company in deep water and played a large role in sending the final fine sum soaring. It’s a hefty sum but on the upside, BP has 18 years to come up with the cash. Money will be put towards reimbursing clean-up expenditures, as well as continuing ongoing environmental monitoring.

Environmentalists push for harsher penalty

Part of the fine includes $7.1 billion worth of “natural resource damage assessment” as well as a $5.5 billion fine for breaching the Clean Water Act. Yet despite the eye-watering amount, environmentalists are maintaining that the punishment is not harsh enough. Jacqueline Savitz, vice-president for international ocean organisation Oceana explains, “If the court approves this proposal, BP will be getting off easy and ‘we the people’ will not be fully compensated for the natural resource damages that we suffered, and the law requires that the public is made whole for those damages.” She stresses that by letting BP off the hook other companies will start to believe that they can also get away with negligence.

Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund takes a more positive line and sees the pay out as a milestone achievement. He explains that “while no monetary award reverse the damage of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe “Today’s agreement, the largest environmental settlement in American history, represents a significant step toward justice for the Gulf Coast ecosystems, economies and communities that were damaged by the disaster.”

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