BP today reached an historic $20.8 billion settlement with the government and five Gulf states to resolve civil claims arising from the 2010 Macondo well blowout and the massive oil spill that followed in the Gulf of Mexico. It is the largest settlement with a single entity in the Department’s history.
The settlement, which still must be approved by the court, is the result of a civil lawsuit the Justice Department filed against BP and several co-defendants in December 2010, seeking to hold them accountable for the Deepwater Horizon disaster. “The federal lawsuit culminated in a three-phase civil trial in which the United States proved, among other things, that the spill was caused by BP’s gross negligence,” according to the Justice Department.
