BP is facing a possible civil penalty of up to $13.7bn for its 2010 spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a result of a court ruling on Thursday, after a US judge split the difference between competing claims about how much oil had escaped into the ocean.
The highest possible penalty is about $4bn less than the maximum previously sought by the US government, but still almost four times as much as the amount set aside by the company.
Judge Carl Barbier at the US District Court in New Orleans ruled on Thursday that BP’s Macondo well had leaked 3.19m barrels of oil into the waters of the gulf: a figure that was not far from the midpoint of the range set by the competing estimates from BP and the US government.
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