NEW ORLEANS-The Gulf of Mexico should largely recover from BP's oil spill within three years, and all final settlement offers to victims who lost revenue from the disaster will be based on that assessment, the administrator of the $20 billion compensation fund said yesterday. Attorney Kenneth Feinberg said the Gulf Coast Claims Facility used "various data and expert reports" to determine that a 30 per cent recovery is likely in 2011 with full recovery in 2012. He notes, however, that oyster harvesting will take longer.
The fund was set up by BP PLC in August to compensate residents, fishermen and business owners for lost revenue following BP's oil well blowout off Louisiana. It has so far paid about $3.3 billion to 168,000 claimants, but many are still waiting for any money, and thousands of others claim they were shortchanged. About half of the total 485,000 claims filed have been denied because of ineligibility or lack of documentation.
Feinberg has faced repeated criticism about the slow pace of payments and the small size of checks to victims, as well as complaints about lack of transparency and perceived influence from BP. The hits continued yesterday. "While this office had hoped that the methodology would finally provide some transparency, this document provides no useful information to claimants beyond a simplistic multiplier and is based on very optimistic assumptions about unknown environmental and economic conditions," Florida Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a court filing. (AP)
