BP agrees to pay 4.5 billion dollars for oil spill

Oil giant BP Thursday agreed to pay 4.5 billion dollars to the US authorities for criminal claims arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the company said in London. Following a settlement reached with the US Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over “all US federal government criminal and SEC claims against BP, the sum will be paid over a period between five to six years. The penalty is believed to be the largest ever paid in US corporate history, exceeding the 1.2-billion-dollar fine paid by drugs group Pfizer for marketing fraud in 2009, dpa reported. Eleven oil workers died in the explosion, which triggered the biggest environmental disaster in US history, releasing 4.9 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a period of 87 days.