FT: “BP has asked the US Supreme Court to step in after federal courts in New Orleans lifted an injunction blocking the payment of business claims for economic losses under the settlement that the UK company agreed for victims of the oil spill in 2012.”
“The UK oil group on Wednesday filed a request for the Supreme Court to block disputed compensation awards related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, warning that it faced “staggering” costs “far exceeding the actual injury caused by the spill” if payments were allowed to go ahead.
BP which now must resume making compensation payments while it awaits a response to its petition, argued that if the Supreme Court did not overrule the lower courts and support the injunction, the company stood to lose “hundreds of millions” of dollars that would be “irretrievably scattered to claimants that suffered no injury traceable to BP’s conduct.”
….The company said in its filing to the Supreme Court that of the $2bn already paid out to businesses, $76m has gone to “entities whose losses had nothing to do with the spill”, and $546m more to claimants “located far from the spill and . . . engaged in businesses whose revenues and profits bear no logical connection to the spill”.
It added there was a further $1bn in business claims already accumulated and waiting to be paid out now that the injunction has been lifted.
The company originally estimated the entire settlement would cost it $7.8bn.”
Future Today
