A US federal district court judge in Louisiana ruled on Thursday that BP’s Macondo well discharged 3.19 million barrels of oil into the US Gulf of Mexico.
The ruling means that BP faces a maximum fine of US$13.7 billion under the US Clean Water Act for the 2010 disaster that claimed 11 lives.
The maximum penalty under the act is $1100 per barrel for simple negligence and $4300 per barrel for gross negligence or willful misconduct.
The supermajor issued a statement on the ruling saying, “BP believes that considering all the statutory penalty factors together weighs in favor of a penalty at the lower end of the statutory range."
The next phase of the trial, which will assign penalties, is set to begin on 20 January 2015.
Judge Carl Barbier, representing the Eastern District of Louisiana, wrote in his 44-page ruling that BP was not “grossly negligent, reckless, willful, or wanton in its source control planning and preparation.”
Barbier said that there was no way to know exactly how much oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, but that the court relied on expert testimony to come to an approximate amount.
Lawyers for the US Department of Justice argued that 5 MMbo were released from the reservoir, resulting in a net discharge of 4.19 MMbo while BP estimated that 3.26 MMbo were released from the reservoir, resulting in a net discharge of 2.45 MMbo. Barbier eventually ruled that 4 MMbo were released from the reservoir, resulting in a net discharge of 3.19 MMbo.
In September, Barbier issued a 153-page ruling that found the Macondo spill was the result of BP’s gross negligence and willful misconduct.
“The court finds that BP’s conduct was ‘reckless’ under general maritime law and a substantial cause of the blowout, explosion, and oil spill,” Barbier wrote. He stated further that while the court had identified several examples where Transocean’s conduct “fell below the standard of care,” Barbier wrote that “BP had a hand in most of these failures.”
BP was assigned 67% liability for the spill while contractors Transocean and Halliburton were assigned 30% and 3%, respectively.
Read more:
Court rules BP showed “gross negligence”
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