Gulf Oil Spill Tab Amounts to $8 Billion

Just a day after another oil rig explosion in the Gulf, BP announced the new total cost of the oil spill - a whopping 8 billion dollars. This figure is a revised cost from the August 9 figure of 6.1 billion. In June, the BP Group announced a 20 billion dollar escrow account was being opened for future related costs. Many experts believe this figure will need to increase to cover all future costs.

The company released a statement saying no new oil has leaked into the Gulf since July 15. This was a relief for millions to hear, as it took more than three months to find a solution for fixing the leak.

So far, more than 40,000 claims have been filed since the processing was transferred to the Gulf Coast Claims facility on August 23, for the Gulf shore residents. BP has made payments on 127,000 total claims equaling just less than 400 million dollars.

The challenge before BP now is raising the funds to pay for the disaster. With plans to raise over 30 billion dollars from the sale of assets, they have already raised just under 10 billion, as reported by a company spokesperson.

The cleanup continues daily in the Gulf. Since no new oil has leaked into the Gulf for a couple of months, the main concern is to continue to do reconnaissance missions with planes and to skin as much oil as possible from the surface of the water. More than 28,000 BP personnel are involved with the hands-on task of removing oil from the water. With the use of dozens of aircraft and more than 4,000 sea vessels, skimming operations are functioning at 100 per cent capacity. This effort has resulted in more than 826,000 barrels of oil liquid recovered, which has removed approximately 265,000 barrels of oil from the water. Additionally, more than 400 controlled burns have been carried out.

In addition to tackling the ongoing challenge of the cleanup in the Gulf, BP is prepared to release a report to answer questions on what happened with the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The same rig which exploded and then sank, creating the worst oil leak in history.

The investigation leading to the findings to be released in the report, was conducted by Mark Bly, BP’s head of safety and operations.

Rumors about the report have been spreading that BP will be releasing the report possibly as early as next week.

BP tagged Bly to do the investigation, which should keep the US government possibly out of the circle of the “blame game”. By conducting their own independent research, their effort to blame a group of low to mid level employees could be successful. In blaming employees, upper level executives could possibly be spared - at least that is the goal. US politicians are labeling the investigation as just skimming the surface, no pun intended.

BP was accused of deflecting responsibility from the top brass back in 2005, when an explosion at a Texas City refinery killed 15 employees . Instead, they found low level workers at fault, and let them take the heat. A much later investigation found the cost cutting measures, BP has been accused of using in the past, were to blame for the accident.

BP will be under the magnifying glass when it comes to deciding if the company owning the rig, contributed to the report. Donald Vidrine, who has declined twice to appear before a Coast Guard - Interior Department panel investigating the disaster, was the senior representative on the rig.