AmericasOffshore

Deepwater Horizon damages claim offices to close for good

San Francisco: Friday will see the closure of the 10 offices handling settlement claims for Gulf Coast residents who suffered damages from the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The offices have been open for three years but they will shut their doors in two more days the Louisiana lawyer running BP’s oil spill settlement program said on Wednesday.

Although the deadline to file claims under the 2012 settlement already passed on June 8 the 10 Claimant Assistant Centres had stayed open to take questions from claimants who say they saw financial losses in the wake of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

BP has paid out $5.3 billion in claims to more than 66,000 individual claimants, and there are hundreds of thousands of claims still waiting to be processed. BP said in its first-quarter financial statement the settlement could run up to $10.3 billion.

The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded and sank on 22 April 2010, claiming the lives of 11 crewmen and spewing millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days before the well was staunched.

Donal Scully

With 28 years experience writing and editing for newspapers in the UK and Hong Kong, Donal is now based in California from where he covers the Americas for Splash as well as ensuring the site is loaded through the Western Hemisphere timezone.
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