June 21, 2011
WASHINGTON (AFP) - BP on Monday announced it had struck a deal with oil services company Weatherford International, to settle potential claims between them linked to the Deepwater Horizon accident.
"BP and Weatherford have agreed to mutual releases of potential claims against each other, and BP has agreed to indemnify Weatherford for compensatory claims resulting from the accident, including claims brought relating to pollution damage stemming from the accident," BP said in a statement.
"The agreement is not an admission of liability by any party regarding the accident," it added.
A presidential commission last January found that the Deepwater Horizon incident was the product of complex causes involving multiple parties.
"Weatherford is the first of BP's contractors to formally agree with BP that the entire industry can and should learn from the Deepwater Horizon incident," BP added.
Under the deal, Weatherford, which manufactured the float collar used in the well, will pay BP $75 million.
And "BP will immediately apply the payment to the $20 billion trust it established to meet individual, business and government claims, as well as the cost of the Natural Resource Damages," the BP statement added.
"This settlement allows BP and Weatherford to put our legal issues behind us and move forward together in strengthening processes and procedures, safety, and best practices in offshore drilling," said BP America Chairman and President Lamar McKay.
The British oil giant stressed in its release that it was "working to ensure that the other parties involved in the Macondo well" mentioning by name Transocean, which owned and operated the Deepwater Horizon rig; Halliburton, which designed and pumped the unstable cement that the commission found was a key cause of the accident; and Anadarko, which owned 25 percent of the project.
BP said on May 20 that it had recovered more than $1.0 billion in costs linked to last year's devastating Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The leak was triggered by an explosion on the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig in the US Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010. The blast killed 11 workers, caused millions of barrels of oil to spew into the sea and left the British company scrambling to meet huge compensation costs.
