A federal district judge in New Orleans approved a record-breaking $20 billion settlement in the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill that killed 11 workers and spilled millions of gallons of crude oil into the Gulf over a period of months.
Federal lawyers last month had asked the judge to approve the whopping settlement agreement that the Department of Justice and five Gulf Coast states had announced in July,
The sixth anniversary of the massive 134-million gallon oil spill is April 20.
The settlement was approved Monday by District Court Judge Carl Barbier, resolving years of litigation. Barbier found BP “grossly negligent” in an earlier decision on the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion.
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The settlement includes $5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions of dollars more for environmental damages and others state claims. The amount will be paid by BP over 16 years.
