BP Spill: Has the damage been exaggerated?

[spurraider21]

unrelated, but...

[boutons_deux]

EPA Gives BP ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’ on 4th Anniversary of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster


But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just given BP a big one. The EPA ruled that the corporation could start bidding on lucrative new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico after having been suspended from doing any new business with the government ever since the accident.
That suspension was lifted on March 13 less than a week before the yearly government auction for drilling rights. The company whose negligence was responsible for the worst marine oil-spill in history won 43 new leases in the Gulf that is still fouled by million of gallons of unrecovered crude.

http://ecowatch.com/2014/04/20/epa-b...zon-oil-spill/

[boutons_deux]

BP is refusing to pay for Gulf oil spill research

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, BP is making much of its commitment to clean up the Gulf of Mexico — but it’s refusing to cough up the money needed to determine just how much damage the spill actually caused.

According to do ents obtained by the Financial Times, the company denied money to the federal government to fund studies assessing the oil spill’s impact on the Gulf, including its effect on the region’s dolphins, whales and oysters. While the company s ed out over $1 billion for the Natural Resource Damage Assessment, which is “intended to provide a common understanding of the problems of the gulf shared by BP and the U.S. government, so the company knows what it needs to do to meet its legal obligation to put the damage right,” it’s since called the research process into question, denying most of the government’s further requests for funding. FT reports:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency, wrote to BP last July seeking almost $148m to pay for “injury assessment and restoration planning activities”, including funding of $2.2m for research into the recovery of the coastal wetlands, more than $10m for dolphins and whales and $22m for oysters.

In October, BP replied to the NOAA request rejecting the majority of those requests, saying it was concerned over “the lack of visibility and accountability” in the process, and the unwillingness of the NRDA trustees, which are US federal agencies and coastal state governments, to engage in technical discussions of the substantive issues.
BP said it had paid for work that was not done or done properly, been double-billed for the same study, and not been allowed to see research findings that it had been told would be shared.

Published numbers suggest BP has slowed sharply its spending on the NRDA. By the end of 2012, it had spent $973m, the company said last year, and it now puts its spending to date at “more than $1bn”.

BP has made no secret of its disdain for data linking the oil to sick dolphins, more than 600 of which washed up on Louisiana’s beaches in the two years following the spill. In response to this latest report, the company released a statement saying only that “BP is committed to funding environmental restoration for damage caused by the spill, and a comprehensive scientific assessment of the effects of the spill is the first step in that process.”

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/21/bps_...pill_research/

[boutons_deux]

Four Years After The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, The Gulf Is Still Suffering




In his 34 years living in Louisiana, Ryan Lambert can’t remember ever seeing young, dead dolphins on his trips out in the Gulf. In just the last few months, however, he says he’s seen two.

Lambert, who owns a charter fishing company in Louisiana, told ThinkProgress he’s worried that the dying dolphins he’s still seeing point to lingering effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which four years ago killed 11 people and spewed 210 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

“We still see little telltale signs,” he said. “There’s crabs with holes in their s s we’re seeing that we haven’t seen before, and I’ve never seen baby dolphins die.”
One study has linked the spill to dolphin deaths in the Gulf, finding that dolphins’ diseases in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay are rare but consistent with oil exposure. BP, however, has disputed that ongoing deaths and strandings are a result of the spill.

Still, in the four years since the BP oil spill, it’s clear some places in the Gulf are still reeling from the effects of the millions of gallons of oil and chemical dispersants that doused the water. On Cat Island in Baratria Bay, a habitat that was once thick with mangroves and hosted hundreds of pairs of nesting nesting pelicans, all that’s left now is “bones of black mangrove stumps” as the Times-Picayune reports. The island is also quickly eroding, a process sped up by the oil, which still lingers in the island’s marshy soil and has killed off the trees that help bind the soil together.

“We’re in a system in Barataria Bay that’s already facing severe erosion, but it was clear that as this oil came ashore, and it stressed or killed plants, it was entirely predictable that we would see a higher rate of erosion on those shorelines that got oil,” David Muth, Director of the National Wildlife Federation’s Mississippi River Delta Restoration campaign, told ThinkProgress. “So you’re compounding a problem that already existed.”

Muth’s team at NWF has been monitoring Cat Island carefully since the spill. Last year, he said, the island’s mangroves appeared to be dying, but there were still birds nesting on the island. But this year, there were no birds, and all the mangroves had died.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...te+Progress%29

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BP claims mission accomplished in Gulf cleanup; Coast Guard begs to differ

Helpful though it may have seemed for BP to speak on behalf of the federal government, the Coast Guard took some umbrage. From The Washington Post:

Coast Guard Capt. Thomas Sparks, the federal on-scene coordinator of the Deepwater Horizon response, sought to stress that the switch to what he called a “middle response” process “does not end cleanup operations.”

“Our response posture has evolved to target re-oiling events on coastline segments that were previously cleaned,” said Sparks. “But let me be absolutely clear: This response is not over — not by a long shot.”

The Gulf Restoration Network tried to explain the semantics behind BP’s deceptive statement. “When oil washes up on shore, BP is no longer automatically obliged to go out there and clean up the mess,” spokesperson Raleigh Hoke said. “Now the onus is on the public, and state and federal governments to find the oil and then call BP in.”

We get why BP would wish that the cleanup were over. The efforts have already cost $14 billion — a fraction of the $42 billion that the company expects to pay out in fines, compensation claims, and other costs related to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It’s a nightmare that we all wish were over — but wishes and rhetoric do not remove poisons from an ecosystem.

http://grist.org/news/bp-claims-miss..._campaign=feed

[boutons_deux]

4 Years after BP's Gulf Oil Spill, Compensation Battle Rages

Four years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, oil is still washing up on the long sandy beaches of Grand Isle, Louisiana, and some islanders are fed up with hearing from BP that the crisis is over.

Jules Melancon, the last remaining oyster fisherman on an island dotted with colorful houses on stilts, says he has not found a single oyster alive in his leases in the area since the leak and relies on an onshore oyster nursery to make a living.

He and others in the southern U.S. state say compensation has been paid unevenly and lawyers have taken big cuts.

The British oil major has paid out billions of dollars in compensation under a settlement experts say is unprecedented in its breadth.

Some claimants are satisfied, but others are irate that BP is now challenging aspects of the settlement. Its portrayal of the aftermath of the well blowout and explosion of its drilling rig has also caused anger.

"They got an advert on TV saying they fixed the Gulf but I've never been fixed," said Melancon, who was compensated by BP, but deems the sum inadequate.

The oil company has spent over $26 billion on cleaning up, fines and compensation for the disaster, which killed 11 people on the rig and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days after the blast on April 20, 2010.

That is more than a third of BP's total revenues for 2013, and the company has allowed for the bill to almost double, while fighting to overturn and delay payments of claims it says have no validity, made after it relinquished control over who got paid in a settlement with plaintiff lawyers in March 2012.

The advertisement that most riled Dean Blanchard, who began what later became the biggest shrimp company in the United States in 1982, was the one first aired by BP on television in late 2011 that said "all beaches and waters are open".(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoOfIR4Vk1o)

At that time almost 50 square miles of water in Louisiana were closed to fishing, according to the state's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Seven fishing areas are still closed, three where Blanchard says he would usually get his seafood.

Asked about the discrepancy, BP, which made the cleanup advertisements to help the affected states bring visitors back, said there was no scientific basis for the water closures and that all studies had found that seafood was safe to consume.

PERCEIVED INJUSTICE

Perceived injustice, between those who got payouts and those who did not, has divided the small community on Grand Isle, 50 miles south of New Orleans. Within sight of a line of deep sea oil rigs, it was one of the worst-affected areas.

Long streaks of oil marked the sand where a couple of tourists walked barefoot and small tarballs, which environmentalists say contain the most toxic form of oil, had collected on part of the beach when Reuters visited in October to report on the legacy of the spill.

The Gulf Restoration Network, an environmental group which monitors spilt BP oil, says it is still appearing in Grand Isle. The group saw what it called "thousands of tarballs" there on April 9th and collected some of them for testing.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...-battle-rages/

[boutons_deux]

Another article I read, a researcher was counting insects, whose count was way way down in the wetlands from before the spill. No insects = no food for fish, birds.

[boutons_deux]

Numbers on the board: The Gulf Coast, four years after the BP disaster




Last week, I wrote about three victories that have emerged since the BP disaster, but the flip side of that is a host of problems that continue to plague the Gulf, which has suffered a whole string of insults, from Hurricane Katrina to ongoing erosion of its coastlines due to to erosion and fossil fuel extraction. Below is an index of statistics on the Gulf’s health, cobbled together from recent news articles, reports, and datasets do enting damage done to the coast:

• 30 percent: Portion of the nation’s shrimp supply that comes from the Mississippi River Delta area
• 900: Bottlenose dolphins found dead or stranded in the oil spill area since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded
• 500: Sea Turtles found dead or stranded near the oil spill area between 2011 and 2013
• 20 percent: Portion of the Gulf’s bluefin tuna exposed to oil while in their larval stage
• 82 percent: Population decline in bluefin tuna since the 1970s due to overfishing
• 778 miles: Amount of coastline BP says it cleaned before ending “active cleanup”
• $14 billion: Amount BP says it spent on spill response and cleanup activities
• $12.9 billion: Amount BP says it paid in claims, advances, civil settlements, and payments for tourism promotion, seafood testing, marketing, and health services
• $23 billion: BP’s profits in 2013
• 70 million: Number of personnel hours BP says it used in the cleanup effort
• 33,000: Number of cleanup workers and coastal residents exposed to BP oil or dispersant who are being tracked in a National Ins ute for Health study
• 20 percent: Portion who were out of work when initially contacted for the survey
• $105 million: Amount BP paid under a partial settlement for the oil spill to fund new healthcare centers and services for the Gulf
• 17 months: Time period BP was banned from all federal contracts
• Two weeks: Length of time after that suspension was lifted before BP had another oil spill
• Five: Number of rigs BP had in the Gulf of Mexico before the spill
• 10: Number of oil rigs BP currently has in the Gulf
• 1.3 million: Barrels of oil produced daily in the U.S. Gulf in 2011
• 2 million: Barrels of oil expected to come from the U.S. Gulf daily by 2020

http://grist.org/climate-energy/numbers-on-the-board-the-gulf-coast-four-years-after-the-bp-disaster/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaig n=feed

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just another "external cost" BigOil won't pay

Oil spill damage to Gulf was deeper, wider than thought, say scientists

Four years after a BP oil rig exploded and flooded the Gulf of Mexico with an estimated 170 million gallons of oil, scientists have discovered further evidence of coral communities affected by this environmental disaster.

Scientists at Pennsylvania State University, in State College, Pa., found coral communities that show signs of damage from 2010's Deepwater Horizon oil spill more than 12 miles (20 kilometers) from the disaster site. The new findings suggest that the oil spill's footprint is both deeper and wider than was previously thought.

"This study very clearly shows that multiple coral communities, up to 22 kilometers [13.7 miles] from the spill site and at depths over 1,800 meters [5,905 feet], were impacted by the spill,"

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/201...say-scientists

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U.S. court says BP 'grossly negligent' in 2010 spill, billions in fines loom

BP PLC was "grossly negligent" for its role in the 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico, a U.S. district judge said on Thursday in a ruling that could add billions of dollars in fines to the more than $42 billion in charges taken so far for the worst offshore disaster in U.S. history.

Shares of BP traded in the United States fell 5 percent, or $2.40, to $45.31, eroding about $8.8 billion of its market value.

"The Court concludes that the discharge of oil 'was the result of gross negligence or willful misconduct' by BP, said the ruling from U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans.

BP said it would appeal the ruling.

A gross negligence verdict carries a potential fine of $4,300 per barrel fine, with BP having said some 3.26 million barrels leaked from the well and the U.S government having said 4.9 million barrels spilled.

Barbier apportioned 67 percent of the fault to BP, 30 percent to Transocean Ltd , which owned the drillship, and 3 percent to Halliburton , which did cement work on the Macondo well that blew out. Both of those companies have sought to limit their liability from the spill.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/busine...904-story.html

With the Exxon/Valdez history, I expect BP to appeal, go judge shopping, and get the fine down to a couple $B, and take 20 years to do it.

btw, Prince William Sound has still not recoved from Exxon Valdez destruction.

[boutons_deux]

You need to know this. The 2010 BP oil disaster released about 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and according to a new study, about 2 million barrels are still trapped on the ocean floor.

The study, called Fallout Plume of Submerged Oil from Deepwater Horizon, was conducted by researchers from the University of California, and led by grochemistry professor Dave Valentine.

The scientists analyzed sea sediment from the Gulf and discovered what they called a "bathtub ring" of oil the size of the state of Rhode Island. Despite the obvious link to the 2010 explosion and subsequent leak,

BP denied a connection to Deepwater Horizon, and issued a statement saying "The authors failed to identify the source of the oil."

However, the authors of this recent study, which was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say that the 2010 spill's impact could be even worse than they have indicated.

The study reads, "We also suggest that a significant quan y of oil was deposited outside this area, but so far has evaded detection because of its heterogeneous spatial distribution." In other words, oil that spread in different directions still may not be accounted for.

It's been over four years since the Deepwater Horizon exploded and began spewing oil into our Gulf, and we still don't know the full extent of the damage, or whether it will ever really be cleaned up.

Yet, BP is still raking in profits and more wells are being drilled off our shores.

What will it take to make us wake up to the dangers of oil drilling?

And, how much must a corporation destroy before they lose the privilege of doing business in our great nation? For the sake of our planet, and our species, we must answer those questions before we find ourselves dealing with an even bigger disaster.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/27234-on-the-news-with-thom-hartmann-2-million-barrels-of-oil-still-trapped-on-the-ocean-floor-after-bp-spill-and-more

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Millions of gallons of BP oil found resting on the Gulf floor

Another study has identified a massive amount of oil resting on the Gulf of Mexico’s floor, contradicting BP’s claims that everything is totally better now and raising questions about the lasting impact of the 2010 spill.

Researchers at Florida State University identified some 6 to 10 million gallons of BP oil buried in the sediment at the bottom of the Gulf, covering a 9,300 square mile area southeast of the Mississippi Delta. Their findings, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, help solve the mystery of where all the oil went: a federal judgeruled that BP spilled about 134 million gallons of oil in total, although government estimates put that amount even higher.

Last year, geochemists at the University of California-Santa Barbara identified a similar phenomenon, of what they called a “bathtub ring” of oil the size of Rhode Island scattered across the Gulf. The authors of this study, as with that one, express concern about what it’s doing down there. Jeff Chanton, a professor of oceanology at FSU and the study’s lead author, notes that as oil remains deep underwater, it encounters less oxygen, making it more difficult to decompose.

And just because it’s buried doesn’t mean it’s gone forever. “This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Chanton said. “Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/30/mill...he_gulf_floor/

[boutons_deux]

U.S. appeals ruling on size of BP oil spill

The U.S. government is appealing a federal court ruling that reduced the potential penalty BP Plc must pay for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill by almost $4 billion.

The appeal, which was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in New Orleans, challenges a January decision by U.S. District Court Judge Carl Barbier that set the size of the spill at 3.19 million barrels. The appeal did not detail what aspects of Barbier's ruling it was challenging.

The government had estimated the size of the spill at 4.09 million barrels and BP at 3.26 million.

BP could have been fined a maximum of $17.6 billion under the Clean Water Act but Barbier's ruling on the spill size lowered the potential figure to $13.7 billion.

BP has incurred more than $42 billion of costs for the spill, including for clean up, fines and compensation for victims. About 810,000 barrels were collected during the clean up.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/...edName=topNews

3M - 4M spilled, but only 800K recovered? that's leaving 2M - 3M poisoning the Gulf

I wonder if BP CEO Tony Hayward "got his life back" ? poor guy

[boutons_deux]

Report: BP Oil Spill Still Harming At Least 20 Animal Species

At least 20 animal species are still suffering from the effects of the largest oil spill in U.S. history nearly five years after it occurred, according to a National Wildlife Federation report released Monday.

The common loon, blue crab, red snapper, and sperm whale are among the animals named in the NWF’s report, Five Years And Counting: Gulf Wildlife in the Aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon Disaster. Those animals only make up a small portion of the 13,000 species in the Gulf, the federation’s president told reporters on a phone call Monday, implying the difficulty of determining the spill’s total long-term impact on animals.

“Given the significant quan y of oil remaining on the floor of the Gulf and the unprecedented large-scale use of dispersal during the spill, it will be years or even decades before the full impact of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is known,” the report said. “It is clear that robust scientific monitoring of the Gulf ecosystem and its wildlife populations must continue — and that restoration of degraded ecosystems should begin as soon as possible.”

The report comes just a few days after BP filed papers in federal court arguingits businesses would be threatened by fines LIARS! for its historic April 2010 spill, which saw an estimated 210 million gallons of oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is currently weighing what that fine should be, and it could be as high as $13.7 billion — but BP is arguing that anything above $2.3 billion would put its U.S. business in serious trouble.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/201...cting-animals/



BP announces record profits

Oil giant BP sparked fresh fury among motoring groups today after it emerged the company generated profits at the rate of £1.3 million an hour.

The UK-based group achieved profits of £2.86 billion (4.13 billion US dollars) in the first three months of this year alone.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...#ixzz3VxUpEJii

$13B is about ONE YEAR BP PROFIT, "threatened"?

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Deepwater oil spill: BP steps up PR effort to insist all is well in the Gulf

In the run-up to the five-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon spill this April, BP is ramping up its effort to convince consumers that life is returning to normal on the Gulf coast.

Over the last month, the company has released PR materials that highlight the Gulf’s resilience, as well as a report compiling scientific studies that suggest the area is making a rapid recovery.

But evidence is mounting that five years after millions of gallons of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, wildlife is still struggling to rebound. A new report, released on Monday by the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), suggests that at least 20 species are still being affected by the spill.

“This report, more so than any, shows that science is certain that this is a long-term problem,” said Ryan Fikes, a scientist with NWF. “But it’s going to take even more time to understand the true magnitude of this.”

The NWF report is the organization’s fifth survey highlighting scientific research into the environmental impact of the spill. This year, the NWF found that higher-than-normal rates of death for many species continued, and are likely linked to the disaster: dolphins along Louisiana’s coastline were found dead at four times historic rates last year, and research has shown the deaths of 12% of brown pelicans and 32% of a species of gull can be linked to the spill.

The NWF report also says the eggs of many animals – from trout in the Gulf to pelicans nesting as far away as Minnesota – have been found to contain oil and the dispersant used by BP in the wake of the spill.

A representative from BP sent a statement, attributed to senior vice-president Geoff Morrell, that read in part: “The National Wildlife Federation report is a work of political advocacy … the dire predictions made in 2010 have fortunately not come to pass.”

http://www.theguardian.com/environme...oast-deepwater

If BigCorp's lips are moving, it's lying.

[MultiTroll]

boutons,
Another fabulous article^^^ and you know worse spills are coming from the Oil Pigs. Sooner if not later.
I'm curious, since you do not believe in God / Satan, what/who do you believe will save mankind from ever increasing evil?
The earths pollution rate is continuing at a rate that, left unchecked no doubt mankind would ruin the earth.

[boutons_deux]

"since you do not believe in God / Satan"

WRONG conclusion

Yep, greed and measuring and religion are ing up the planet, no need for nuclear holocaust.

[MultiTroll]

^^ so who is gonna solve it to you?

[boutons_deux]

^^ so who is gonna solve it to you?

the planet is ed and un able. When a socialist/communist/terrorist like Obama is pushing the TTP/TTIP to elevate corporate/financial power ABOVE national power, the situation is un able.

[Cry Havoc]

darrins abandoning this thread after getting repeatedly murked.

[MultiTroll]

the planet is ed and un able. When a socialist/communist/terrorist like Obama is pushing the TTP/TTIP to elevate corporate/financial power ABOVE national power, the situation is un able.

i was not asking the cause, i am asking the solution.
FWIW i believe God will intervene and put an end to Satan and those who, following Satan want to and would destroy the Earth if allowed to continue.

[boutons_deux]

Five Years After the BP Oil Disaster: A Barrier Island for Nesting Birds Devoid of Life


Cat Island, off the Gulf Coast in Louisiana's Plaquemines Parish, was home to a vibrant bird rookery inhabited by brown pelicans, seagulls, spoonbills, and egrets before BP's Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Five years after the largest oil spill in American history, the barrier island has just about disappeared.

Despite ongoing efforts by former Plaquemines Parish coastal zone manager PJHahn to restore the island, only the needed building permits and an engineering plan have been completed.

"Cat Island was ground zero of the oil spill," Hahn told DeSmogBlog.




At the time of the spill, Cat Island was approximately five and a half acres, covered by a dense forest of black mangrove trees which were occupied by nesting birds. All that remains now are two small strips of land — less than an acre combined. Mangrove stumps jut out from the broken, s -covered sandy remains of the island, at times fully submerged during high tide.

"The island was a treasure and it deserves to be restored," Hahn told DeSmogBlog. He continues to advocate for the restoration project he spearheaded.

"It's a hard sell for many since the island doesn't serve as storm protection like other barrier islands that are in the process of being restored since the spill," Hahn said.
But Cat Island and other small barrier islands, some of which have completely eroded since the spill, were perfect bird habitats because they were free of predators. Hahn believes the $6 million restoration price tag is a good investment, one that will pay for itself in dollars generated by the tourism industry. "Bird watchers from all over will come to visit the island," he said.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3...devoid-of-life

[CosmicCowboy]

Going fishing offshore in Venice Louisiana next month. Since BP destroyed the Gulf guess i won't catch anything.

[boutons_deux]

Five Years After the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, BP’s Most Vulnerable Victims Are Still Struggling

BP agreed to a $7.8 billion settlement, but still hasn’t paid out most Gulf Coast businesses.

But today, Nguyen’s shop is shuttered and silent, a victim of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion on April 20, 2010. “Everybody knows that BP helped shut him down,” Lang said.

Nguyen and his customers blame BP’s labyrinthine claims-processing system, which still hasn’t paid him for the $440,000 in losses he sustained in 2010, when there was no seafood to sell because of the spill. The figure was determined by comparing that year’s paltry sales with a tally of past sales, and was do ented in hundreds of pages submitted by his New Orleans–based lawyer, Joel Waltzer.

Though Skyland Seafood was just one small shop, its closing resounds well beyond Mobile as an example of the small mom-and-pop stores and family-run wholesalers that have struggled to stay in business after more than 3 million barrels of oil began spewing into the Gulf. These operations have made up the heart of the Gulf Coast seafood industry for generations, a lattice of local businesses that crisscross the coast from Florida to Texas. Yet they can’t seem to get compensation from BP for their modest claims.

But the sea is uncertain now.

After the explosion, the Macondo Prospect well gushed for three months. By May, the Louisiana crude oil had traveled 98 miles north to Alabama’s shores, in a gooey mess that officials described as tar balls, tar patties, tar mousse, and tar mats, some the size of a school bus. In the water itself, thick plumes of submerged oil with the consistency of beef liver stretched for miles, fishermen said.

Five years later, many of the fish that fed the Gulf’s vast seafood industry have yet to come back. Fishermen tell of trawling the waters all night and not bringing home enough fish to pay for their fuel. “I don’t know when it will be back to normal,” said Nguyen, who worries about his customers, his livelihood, and his long-standing BP claim.

It’s a familiar story to Florida claims lawyer Tom Young, who noted that he was able to resolve cases in two or three months back in mid-2012, when BP’s court-supervised settlement program was new and the money flowed more freely. Today, Young said, his cases require countless do ents and take an average of 18 to 30 months. “The folks who were impacted the most will have the hardest time getting paid,” he added.

http://www.thenation.com/article/204...s-are-still-st

[boutons_deux]

Gulf Victims Suing BP Disaster's Compensation Czar

Shortly after BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, 2010, one of the most politically well-connected attorneys in the United States was appointed to administer the $20 billion fund to, in theory, pay compensation to those harmed by BP's catastrophe.

President Obama and BP's chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, agreed that attorney Kenneth Feinberg should head the fund. Feinberg would later be chosen, also by Obama, to oversee the compensation of the top executives of the banks that were bailed out with US tax dollars in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.

He has, almost needless to say, been accused of being a fox guarding a chicken house.

Feinberg's firm was paid $1.25 million per month by BP - that we know of (Feinberg refused to disclose the full amount of his compensation and the details of his deal with BP) - to run the so-called Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF).

In essence, BP paid Feinberg $1.25 million a month to limit their liability in the wake of the single largest marine oil disaster in US history.

Outrage against Feinberg escalated enough, that by December 2010, the Center for Justice and Democracy sent a letter to BP CEO Bob Dudley expressing concern over "serious new issues raised about the lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest related to the administration of the Gulf Coast Claims Facility," and pointed out the obvious conflict of interest:

Mr. Feinberg, employed by BP, has decided on his own authority that all claims recipients must release all companies who caused this disaster from any and all legal responsibility, no matter how grossly negligent they were. This sweeping release, which assigns victims' claims to BP, benefits only one actor: BP - the company that happens to pay Mr. Feinberg's salary.

Countless numbers of people along the Gulf Coast with claims against BP became increasingly enraged in their accusations that Feinberg was little more than a BP shill, and demanded that Feinberg stop claiming he was on their side, and not BP's.

Shortly thereafter, in January 2011, the federal judge presiding over BP's oil disaster litigation ruled that Feinberg was not independent of BP and could no longer claim he was, as Feinberg had been promising victims that he was their lawyer and did not answer to BP.

And now he is being sued by people he claimed to have represented against BP.

"In the cases such as BP, Feinberg should be exposed for what he is, the defendant's attorney protecting them at all costs to the detriment of the claimants," Maurie Salvesen, who is suing Feinberg's firm, told Truthout.

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3...pensation-czar