The US District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana has accepted BP’s plea for resolving all federal criminal charges following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
BP will pay $4 billion over a five year period and will serve a term of five years’ probation.
On 14 November, 2012, BP agreed to plead guilty to charges involving the workers’ deaths and for lying to Congress about the size of the spill from its broken well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil, much of which ended up in the Gulf and soiled the shorelines of several states, according to the Associated Press.
“Our guilty plea makes clear, BP understands and acknowledges its role in that tragedy, and we apologize – BP apologizes – to all those injured and especially to the families of the lost loved ones. BP is also sorry for the harm to the environment that resulted from the spill, and we apologize to the individuals and communities who were injured,” said Luke Keller, a Vice President of BP America Inc.The charges to which BP pled guilty included one misdemeanour count under the Clean Water Act, which triggers a statutory debarment, also referred to as mandatory debarment. Mandatory debarment prevents a company from entering into new contracts or new leases with the US government that would be performed at the facility where the Clean Water Act violation occurred. A mandatory debarment does not affect any existing contracts or leases a company has with the U.S. government.
Pursuant to the terms of the plea agreement, the Court also ordered certain equitable relief, including additional actions related to BP’s risk management processes as well as several initiatives with academia and regulators to develop new technologies related to deepwater drilling safety.
In addition, as outlined in the company’s November 2012 agreement with the DOJ, BP will appoint a process safety monitor and an ethics monitor, both with a term of four years, and an independent auditor will report annually on BP’s compliance with the remedial terms of probation.
BP is the largest investor and deepwater leaseholder in the Gulf of Mexico with more than 700 gross blocks and seven rigs now operating there.
