Thousands of residents of the U.S. Gulf Coast will be receiving additional payments from oil giant BP as the region marks the two-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
An independent audit of the 20-billion-dollar compensation fund set up to pay those whose livelihoods were damaged by the explosion of an oil rig that led to oil spewing into the waters for weeks found “significant errors” in the payments, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday.
Some 7,300 individuals and businesses will receive additional payments worth a total of 64 million dollars following the audit, Acting Associate Attorney General Tony West said in a statement.
On April 20, 2010, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in the Gulf of Mexico left 11 people dead and began an 87-day ordeal in which 4.9 million barrels of oil poured into the waters. The local fishing and tourism industry suffered enormous losses.
In a separate development, BP and around 100,000 private claimants on Wednesday submitted a 7.8-billion-dollar settlement proposal.
