Anyone else think the Oil Companies are skimming oil in the Gulf

Civil penalty in the Gulf could be $ 4,300 barrel spill

NEW YORK – Just how many barrels of oil are flowing into the Gulf of Mexico from the Deepwater Horizon spill is one billion U.S. dollars question with implications that go beyond the environment. It can also help determine how much BP and others end up paying for the disaster. Gulf Oil Spill. A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act could expose BP and others for civil penalties are not limited to a finite cap – 75 million U.S. dollars as opposed to a cap on compensation for economic damages. The law allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil spills in U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP’s leaky well.

As a result, the U.S. government to search for BP or others for $ 4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf fine by legal experts and official documents.

So far, analysts and experts calculate the potential oil spill obligations mainly focused on the cost of remediation and compensation for economic damage to the involved parties. Some have also talked about criminal liability.

But the scope for civil penalties has received little attention – and they can very quickly add, depending on how aggressively the U.S. government is pursuing them.

The threat of heavy fines, underlines the importance of quantifying how much oil is pouring into the Gulf. If BP wants to staunch the leak that has now been running for at least 33 days, has estimated a spill rate of 5,000 barrels per day. But some experts say that the volume – and thus the fines – can be more than 10 times higher.

The little known and rarely used clause in the Clean Water Act was added in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska, and was meant to beef the arsenal of sanctions, the government can apply to oil Spillers order to discourage future disasters.

“These civil penalties can be astonishingly high, possibly running into billions,” said Professor David Uhlmann, director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Michigan.

Total liability – including civil fines and the costs of remediation, economic loss and possible criminal liability – and could run into billions into tens of billions, “said Uhlmann.

Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency to seek a federal court to a party whose negligence results in an oil spill in U.S. federal waters fine.

Other companies involved in the Horizon platform and oil BP can share liability, experts said. They include rig owner Transocean Ltd., Halliburton Co. masonry contractor, producer Cameron blowout preventer, and Anadarko and Mitsui, which also have interests in the oil fields.

Sharp rise in fines

The basic amount, the law is $ 1,100 per barrel spilled. But the penalty may increase to $ 4,300 per barrel as a federal court rules of the spill is the result of gross negligence. The fines were originally set at $ 1,000 to $ 3,000, but that was raised in 2004 to keep pace with inflation, said Tracy Hester, head of the Environmental Law and Policy program at the University of Houston.

(To see an EPA memo on the 2004 revision of penalties in the Clean Water Act, click here: here)

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