BP plc, sometimes referred to by its former name British Petroleum, is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. It is one of the six oil and gas “supermajors”.
BP says that according to CBS News that, $500 million of the money it set aside to compensate victims has been awarded to businesses that do not deserve it. Scott Pelley reports the story on 60 Minutes that began with an oil rig explosion that killed 11 and polluted the Gulf of Mexico with over 200 million gallons of oil. The report according to CBS, will be broadcast on 60 Minutes, Sunday May 4 at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
Oil spills are known to cause both immediate and long-term harm to human health and ecosystems. Studies in 2013 suggested that as much as one-third of the released oil remains in the gulf. In 2013 it was reported that dolphins and other marine life continued to die in record numbers with infant dolphins dying at six times the normal rate, and half the dolphins examined in a December 2013 study were seriously ill or dying. BP said the report was “inconclusive as to any causation associated with the spill.” And In October 2013, Al Jazeera reported that the gulf ecosystem was “in crisis”, citing a decline in seafood catches, as well as deformities and lesions found in fish.
In 2014, a study was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which found heart deformities in fish exposed to oil from the spill. The researchers said that their results probably apply to humans as well as fish.
BP Vice President Geoff Morrell says that “Those are all real examples and are, frankly, not exceptions, but rather emblematic of a far larger problem.” Morrell says according to CBS News that, “There are more than a thousand claims just like them that had glaring red flags associated with them that should have been picked out by the claims administrator and instead, were ultimately awarded more than $500 million.” These claims are the result of a new, more lenient compensation agreement that BP signed.
“We want to compensate legitimate claimants, but this here’s an incentive to encourage people to commit fraud and that is wrong,” said BP Attorney Ted Olson according to CBS News. “I think that’s fraud,” Ted Olson reported.
In a study from University of South Florida in February 2014, researchers showed the possibility that subsurface oil particles from Deepwater Horizon had traveled underwater as far south as Sanibel, Florida and reached the West Florida Shelf.
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