And that’s that. From CNN:
A federal judge in New Orleans Tuesday approved a $4 billion plea agreement for criminal fines and penalties against oil giant BP for the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.
U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance imposed the terms that the Justice Department and BP had agreed to last November, which include the oil company pleading guilty to 14 criminal counts — among them, felony manslaughter charges — and the payment of a record $4 billion in criminal penalties over five years.
Once you add in the $1.4 billion levied against Transocean, the total bill for polluting the Gulf of Mexico and killing 11 workers is $5.4 billion. Or, if you’re so inclined, $5.3 million a day since the explosion on April 20, 2010.
Over the same time period, including BP’s $17 billion loss at the time of the explosion, BP has earned $25.966 billion in profit. Meaning that it’s made $25.5 million in profit a day since the explosion. Take out the BP settlement, and that’s $21.57 million every day, from the day the Deepwater Horizon exploded until today, that BP has earned selling oil. That’s $898,000 an hour. About $250 a second, every second.
In other words — I think they’ll survive this “largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.”
