A judge is push­ing back the fed­er­al tri­al over the worst off­shore oil dis­as­ter in US his­to­ry by a week, say­ing Sun­day that BP PLC was mak­ing some progress in set­tle­ment talks with a com­mit­tee over­see­ing scores of law­suits, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple close to the case. Two peo­ple close to the case told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press the de­ci­sion was made Sun­day dur­ing a con­fer­ence call be­tween par­ties in the case and US Dis­trict Judge Carl Bar­bi­er. They spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they were not au­tho­riSed to dis­cuss the call.

They said the judge told those on the call that BP and the Plain­tiffs' Steer­ing Com­mit­tee - were "mak­ing some progress" in their set­tle­ment talks. The steer­ing com­mit­tee is over­see­ing law­suits filed by in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es in the wake of the ex­plo­sion on the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon rig on April 20, 2010, in the Gulf of Mex­i­co. The blast killed 11 work­ers and in­jured 17, and the re­sult­ing oil spill soiled miles (kilo­me­ters) of coast­line.

How­ev­er, the judge did not men­tion the sta­tus of set­tle­ment talks be­tween oth­er par­ties, nor did he men­tion any num­bers be­ing dis­cussed, ac­cord­ing to the peo­ple close to the case. The brief or­der is­sued by Bar­bi­er on Sun­day said on­ly that the de­lay was grant­ed "for rea­sons of ju­di­cial ef­fi­cien­cy and to al­low the par­ties to make fur­ther progress in their set­tle­ment dis­cus­sions."

In a lat­er state­ment, BP, an in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy com­pa­ny with sig­nif­i­cant T&T op­er­a­tions, con­firmed that the start of hear­ings re­lat­ing to the April 2010 Gulf of Mex­i­co oil spill had been de­layed by one week to al­low the com­pa­ny more time to reach an agree­ment with the claimants. "BP and the PSC are work­ing to reach agree­ment to fair­ly com­pen­sate peo­ple and busi­ness­es af­fect­ed by the Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon ac­ci­dent and oil spill," ac­cord­ing to the BP state­ment.

The oil com­pa­ny said that there could be no as­sur­ance that these dis­cus­sions would lead to a set­tle­ment agree­ment and that a fur­ther an­nounce­ment will be made as ap­pro­pri­ate. Among oth­er things, the tri­al that is now set to be­gin March 5 is meant to de­ter­mine the penal­ties that need to be paid by BP and oth­er com­pa­nies in­volved in the oil spill. Bil­lions of US dol­lars are at stake. Sep­a­rate­ly, BP has had dis­cus­sions in re­cent days with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and ce­ment con­trac­tor Hal­libur­ton, ac­cord­ing to sev­er­al peo­ple close to the case.

If no set­tle­ment is ul­ti­mate­ly reached, Bar­bi­er will pre­side over a three-phase tri­al that could last the bet­ter part of a year. The first phase is de­signed to iden­ti­fy the caus­es of the dead­ly blowout and to as­sign per­cent­ages of fault to the com­pa­nies in­volved in the ill-fat­ed drilling project. The tri­al may not yield ma­jor rev­e­la­tions about the caus­es of the dis­as­ter, but the out­come could bring much-need­ed re­lief for tens of thou­sands of peo­ple and busi­ness­es whose liveli­hoods were dis­rupt­ed by the spill.

The de­ci­sions and ac­tions that led to the ex­plo­sion and spill al­ready have been painstak­ing­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the Coast Guard, fed­er­al reg­u­la­tors and a pres­i­den­tial com­mis­sion. Their probes con­clud­ed BP, rig own­er Transocean Ltd and ce­ment con­trac­tor Hal­libur­ton En­er­gy Ser­vices Inc. de­serve to share the blame for a string of risky de­ci­sions that were de­signed to save time and mon­ey. The Deep­wa­ter Hori­zon was drilling in wa­ter a mile (1.6 kilo­me­tres) deep the night of April 20, 2010, when an ex­plo­sion and fire rocked the rig, killing 11 peo­ple. It burned for two days be­fore sink­ing.

An es­ti­mat­ed 206 mil­lion gal­lons (780 mil­lion litres) of oil spilled out of the BP-owned Ma­con­do well over sev­er­al months, foul­ing sandy beach­es and coastal marsh­es and shut­ting vast ar­eas of the Gulf of Mex­i­co to fish­ing. The mas­sive scope of the case - a maze of claims and coun­ter­claims be­tween the com­pa­nies, fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments and plain­tiffs' at­tor­neys - has elicit­ed com­par­isons to the to­bac­co lit­i­ga­tion of the 1990s.

Rough­ly 340 plain­tiffs' lawyers have worked on the case. BP has spent mil­lions of dol­lars on ex­perts and law firms. More than 300 de­po­si­tions have been tak­en. Mil­lions of pages of le­gal briefs have been filed. One Jus­tice De­part­ment lawyer said it would take him 210 years to read all the pages sub­mit­ted in­to the record if he read 1,000 pages a day.

Bar­bi­er, a for­mer pres­i­dent of the Louisiana Tri­al Lawyers As­so­ci­a­tion and ap­pointee of Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton, has a rep­u­ta­tion for speedy but fair tri­als. He will hear and de­cide the case with­out a ju­ry. Each tri­al phase is ex­pect­ed to last two to three months, with breaks in be­tween. Even if all par­ties set­tle their claims be­fore or dur­ing the tri­al, it could take sev­er­al months for claims to be paid.