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President Barack Obama meeting with BP executives (official White House photo by Pete Souza)
In the wake of the largest oil spill in American history, British Petroleum has agreed to create a $20 billion escrow fund for claims from the spill. BP has also agreed to halt dividend payments to shareholders for the rest of the year.
The announcement came Wednesday after a meeting between President Barack Obama and BP executives.
“Currently, under federal law, there is a $75 million cap on how much oil companies could under certain circumstances be required to pay for economic damages resulting from a spill such as this,” Obama said after the meeting. That amount obviously would be insufficient. That’s why I’m pleased to announce that BP has agreed to set aside $20 billion to pay claims for damages resulting from this spill.”
The fund will be administered by Ken Feinberg, who also ran the 9/11 compensation fund.
“This is important progress toward fairly compensating those whose lives and livelihoods have been impacted by the oil spill,” said Rep. Ben Ray Luján in a statement. “Now BP must focus on stopping and cleaning up the spill.”
“I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the American people on behalf of all employees of BP, many of whom are living on the Gulf Coast, and I thank you for your patience,” BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg said after the meeting.
Obama said that containing and stopping the oil leak was the first topic of conversation at the meeting.
Current estimates peg the flow at “between 1.47 million and 2.52 million gallons of oil daily”.
