BP to pay 3 bln USD for Deepwater disaster settlements in 2018

HOUSTON, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- BP said Tuesday that it expects to pay some 3 billion U.S. dollars in cash payments this year for claims related to a court-supervised settlement program.

The British oil company said in the third quarter last year that it had expected those payments for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster to come in at 2 billion dollars for 2018.

The company said in a statement on Tuesday that it will take 1.7 billion U.S. dollars charge in its fourth-quarter earnings for paying out the remaining business economic-loss claims stemming from the disaster.

"With the claim facility's work very nearly done, we now have better visibility into the remaining liability," BP CFO Brian Gilvary said on Tuesday in a statement.

He said BP can manage the post-tax non-operating charge, "especially now that we have the company back into balance at 50 dollars per barrel."

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which cost 11 lives and the spill of millions of barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico in what is the largest environmental disaster in the U.S. history of the oil industry, has cost BP a total of 62 billion U.S. dollars as of 2016 calculations. The after-tax figures came in at around 44 billion dollars.

The company was found by a New Orleans judge to have been grossly negligent in its handling of the disaster. There were tens of thousands of cases against the supermajor following the accident, most of which have been settled.

Despite the huge bill, BP has recovered quite well, supported by higher oil prices last year. The company has continued to invest in large-scale projects and to improve efficiencies to lower its break-even point, and it has boasted a 40-percent decline in its production costs since 2014. Its production last year averaged 3.6 million barrels per day. Enditem