Federal judge rules that total spill from accident was 3.2m barrels, fewer than the 4.2m claimed by US government
BP has won a partial victory in the US courts after a federal judge in New Orleans capped a potential fine for polluting the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 at $13.8bn (£9bn) rather than the feared $18bn. The exact scale of the financial penalty for causing the worst offshore pollution incident in American history will not be known for some time, but BP is confident it will be lower still.
BP has set aside only $3.5bn in its accounts to pay off the fine, and any figure in excess of this could force the company into selling off more assets to pay for it. But the London-based oil company’s shares rose 4% after it said in a statement: “BP believes that considering all the statutory penalty factors together weighs in favour of a penalty at the lower end of the statutory range.”