Two and a half years after the massive gulf oil spill, BP has agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges brought by the Justice Department and cough up $4.5 billion in fines and other payments. This is not the first financial penalty the British oil giant has paid for its careless and destructive behavior, nor should it be the last. Still to come are multibillion-dollar settlements under various environmental laws. The Justice Department must be no less diligent in pressing these claims and should not settle for anything less than what the gulf coast, its battered environment and its residents need to address the long-term consequences of this disaster.
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Under the settlement announced Thursday, payable over five years, the company agreed to plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or negligence, all related to the explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which claimed 11 lives and unleashed an estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. In addition, the Justice Department has charged two senior officials aboard the rig with manslaughter, and a third company official with obstructing a Congressional investigation.
The explosion, according the company's statement, was the result of a failure to properly interpret pressure tests on the well that might have foretold the explosion. Various investigations, including that conducted by President Obama's commission on the spill, have also identified this failure as a probable contributing factor to the disaster. Even now, more than two years later, the exact amount of oil spilled is in dispute. What is beyond dispute is that the spill shut down the nation's richest fishing grounds for many months. The company has already paid $14 billion in cleanup costs and $9 billion in reparations to individuals and businesses; it estimates that it will pay $7.8 billion more to individuals and businesses under an agreement reached earlier this year between the company and the plaintiffs' lawyers.
Looking ahead, BP will owe somewhere between $5 billion and $21 billion under the Clean Water Act. The fines under that act range between $1,100 and $4,300 per barrel, depending on the level of negligence. In addition, the company will almost certainly owe several billion dollars more under the Oil Pollution Act for damage to natural resources like reefs and oyster beds and fish populations.
BP may well prefer a negotiated settlement for liability and damages under those statutes to a long and costly trial. If so, the Justice Department should press hard for the best possible deal from what is still a deep-pocketed company, not only as a deterrent to future misconduct by the industry but also to pay for environmental rehabilitation in the gulf that may take decades to achieve. Last June, as part of the transportation bill, Congress established a Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund and directed that 80 percent of the Clean Water Act penalties be used to carry out a broad, long-term program of restoration of the gulf's fragile ecosystem, which includes the wetlands and barrier islands that had been grievously damaged long before the spill by industrialization, years of mismanagement of the Mississippi River and, most recently, Hurricane Katrina.
In its statement on Thursday, BP promised its shareholders that it would vigorously defend itself against further penalties. The criminal plea could complicate its efforts to contain the cost of remaining civil claims. But nothing would be more important now than a vigorous effort by the Obama administration to pursue the remaining penalties under federal environmental laws.
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