LONDON: The BP announced here the other day that it has agreed to pay its shareholders a sum of 175 million U.S. dollars to settle their claims that the British oil giant misled them about the severity of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
In a written statement, the BP said it will pay the investors this year or next. The deal is subject to approval by the court, it added.
The settlement ended a class-action complaint filed by BP shareholders who accused the company of publicly lowballing the rate of oil spewing into the Gulf.
The lawsuit said the BP’s low estimates of the situation inflated securities prices.
BP officials claimed that between 1,000 and 5,000 barrels of oil were leaked a day when internal estimates indicated the true figure was 10 times higher. BP shares plunged after the revealing of the disaster’s true scale.
“This settlement does not resolve other securities-related litigation in connection with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill,” the statement concluded.
The blowout of the BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico triggered an explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, killing 11 people.
About 4.9 million barrels of crude oil leaked into the Gulf following the explosion, leading to one of the worst environmental disaster in the U.S. history.
So far, the BP has used 56.4 billion dollars to cover the cost of settlements, fines and clean-up costs. The company estimates the cost of dealing with the spill and other clean-up efforts totaled 14 billion dollars.
