| More than 3 billion dollars has already been spent on the cleaning of the Gulf of Mexico.
At present the leak of oil and gas from the emergency well still continues.
A press release from the company published on Monday stated that British Petroleum BP has already spent 3.12 billion dollars for liquidation of the consequences of the spill of oil in the Gulf of Mexico.
The amount spent includes the amount for liquidation of the consequences of the spill, the cost for constructing additional relief wells, the hermetic sealing of wells and the grants to coastal countries and payoffs. The BP Company has already received 95000 claims from victims and 147 million dollars were paid to close 47000 claims.
The platform Deepwater Horizon, operated by BP, sank in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of the State of Louisiana on April 22 ; this occurred after a powerful explosion followed by a 36 hr fire in which 11 people lost their lives. The oil spill which followed and still continues has already caused severe damage to the American States of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi and threatens regions with ecological catastrophe.
On the 16th of June 2010 US President Barack Obama’s Administration and representatives of BP signed a preliminary agreement on the creation of a special fund of 20 billion dollars for compensating the people and companies affected due to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
It is believed that the BP Company shall deposit the stipulated amount into an account within several years. Kenneth Feinberg, who earlier supervised indemnifications to families of victims from September 11, 2001 will monitor the fund.
The spill of oil and gas from the emergency well continues even now. The drilling of two relief wells is underway.
According to the information from the company as of July 3, the total leak would constitute 585,4 thousand barrels of hydrocarbons in petroleum equivalent.
As earlier informed by Bloomberg, waves caused by the hurricane season in the gulf can suspend the oil-collection operations of the company.
44500 employees of the company, US Governmental representatives and volunteers are taking part in rectifying the leak with the use of 6,563 thousand vessels and 113 air vehicles.
The incident in the Gulf of Mexico became the largest emergency oil spill in the US, which exceeded the consequences of the wreck of the tanker Exxon Valdez off the coast of Alaska in 1989. Then, around 260 thousand oil barrels sank along with the ship.
By June 2, 2010, attempts to stop the oil spill were unsuccessful. By this time, the company lost one third of its market capitalization (from the day of the accident it fell from $180 billion to $115 billion); and the expenditure for the clean-up operations exceeded $760 million. By mid-June 2010, unsuccessful attempts to cope with the consequences of the accident and the ever growing louder and louder demands for multi billion-dollar compensation for the damages caused, plummeted the ratings of BP: Agency Fitch Ratings reduced the long-term rating of the company by a whole six levels – from AA (highly reliable) up to BBB (only two places above the “junk” level). In July, it was announced that the CEO Tony Hayward will resign from his post in autumn, which is also associated with the catastrophe by the Deepwater Horizon.
In the beginning of August 2010, it became clear that the oil leak was completely stopped. It was also announced that due to natural causes or due to the efforts of recycling, 75% of the spilled oil had disappeared from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Well in advance, BP was getting ready for the possible multi-billion expenditure to eliminate all consequences of the disaster, in particular, by starting to sell its property. In July, 2010, the company announced the sale of gas assets and gas processing plants to the U.S. Company Apache for $ 7 billion.
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