On Friday, British Petroleum (BP) filed an appeal with a New Orleans court claiming that it should not have to continue to give out 'absurd' and 'fictitious' Deepwater oil spill payouts.
BP now believes that they are being taken advantage of during the aftermath of their oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 workers and spilled over 4 million barrels of oil into the sea. It is currently the United States' most devastating oil spill of all time.
Lawyers for BP have submitted findings that show that companies they paid millions in payouts to were far removed from the site of the 2010 spill and had unaffected earnings during that year. BP contends that if they continue to pay these companies large sums of money, then they will be 'irreparably harmed'. This appeal follows a March 5 ruling that they must continue with the payouts.
"BP did not agree to pay what is already hundreds of millions of dollars, and potentially billions, to claimants with 'losses' that do not exist in reality, but result solely from the claims administrator's rewriting of the agreement," reads one part of the filing.
The issue at hand is a complex one for several reasons. First, the definition of 'losses' has to be identified. In BP's eyes, this is probably defined in immediate financial terms. Therefore it makes sense to not pay those whose bottom lines did not appear to be adversely affected in 2010.
For the people of the Gulf however, it's not that simple. BP's oil spill did immediate and permanent harm to the Gulf of Mexico's ecosystem and all the shorelines that border it. The people of the United States Gulf depend on this ecosystem's health for their own present and future economic considerations, and that is not an easy number to quantify.
Hundreds of dolphins have washed ashore and in truth, organisms from the smallest plankton to the largest whales have all been adversely affected. Many animals are exhibiting uncommon behaviors and sightings of larger animals are generally lower than they've been historically. Fisherman have also noticed that some of the fish they're catching have skin lesions.
BP has so far committed to pay $37 billion dollars in private compensation, fines and clean up efforts around the Gulf, and may have to pay much more. They have also payed $4 billion in criminal claims and will not owe any more, but still must deal with economic damage claims made by states, which will probably run them many billions more. The only question left worth asking is: can you really quantify the value of the Gulf of Mexico?
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