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Washington (Alliance News) - British oil giant BP argued Tuesday in a New Orleans courtroom that it should not have to pay huge government fines because it worked hard to clean up after one of the worst oil spills the US had ever seen, according to media reports.
BP faces up to USD13.7 billion in government fines under the US Clean Water Act over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
US District Judge Carl Barbier opened the penalty phase of the trial of BP, which discharged 3.19 million barrels of oil into the Gulf waters, in a federal courtroom.
Eleven people were killed in the April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig. The well - known as the Macondo well - gushed crude oil for 87 days, damaging vital fishing grounds and washing large oil lumps ashore.
Barbier last week set the oil spill amount at 3.19 million barrels, a compromise between a higher amount argued by the US government and a lower amount argued by BP.
The US Clean Water Act provides for up to USD4,300 in punitive fines per barrel released. At that rate, total fines could reach the 13.7 billion dollar level, although Barbier has not cited that amount.
"Before we even knew that the well was flowing, BP was marshalling resources to prepare for the worst," Mike Brock, a BP lawyer, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg news agency.
"It was good work that the Coast Guard and BP did together, and it significantly changed the outcome to the environment."
Brock appeared to get some support from the US Coast Guard Admiral Meredith Austin, who spoke on behalf the Coast Guard that coordinated the clean-up with BP.
"I think BP did a pretty good job," she was quoted as saying. "I'd give it a B-plus or an A."
But she said the clean-up effort drained the Coast Guard's capacity and would have kept it from responding to another major event.
The penalty phase, which is expected to last at least two weeks, is the third phase of the trial. In the first phase, Barbier declared BP grossly negligent before the disaster and allowed potential pollution fines to be more than tripled.
In the second phase, which ended last week, Barbier decided which calculation to use in determining how much oil had been spilled. BP got credit for the amount of spilled oil it collected.
During the four years of legal entanglements and charges, BP has traded blame with Transocean, the rig operator, and Halliburton, which was the cement contractor, for the explosion.
In the September 2014 ruling, Barbier found that BP bore 67% of the fault, Transocean bore 30% and Halliburton bore 3%.
BP has spent nearly USD34 billion responding to the spill, including cleanup, civil claims and a settlement for criminal allegations, according to Bloomberg.
In October 2014, the company said it had taken a USD43 billion pretax charge to cover all costs. But it also said at the time that the ultimate cost was "subject to a significant uncertainty."
Copyright dpa
