Marine Link
Thursday, March 28, 2024
SUBSCRIBE

Mikal Watts News

27 Feb 2014

BP Loses Bid to Block Seafood Fund Payments

A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday denied BP Plc's request to halt payments from the $2.3 billion fund it created to compensate commercial fishermen for financial losses after the British company's 2010 offshore oil spill, according to court records. BP had sought to block the payments after alleging that some individuals supposedly injured by the spill, clients of attorney Mikal Watts, did not exist. The company said it has already paid out more than $1 billion from the so-called Seafood Compensation Fund. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans, who is overseeing litigation stemming from the spill, denied the motion on Wednesday, according to an entry on the court docket.

31 Jul 2013

Deepwater Horizon Spill: Lawyers the Big Winners Says BP Exec.

Geoff Morrell, BP's Vice President and Head of US Communications, comments that the spill deal's big [compensation] winners shouldn't be plaintiffs' lawyers. AL.com Alabama News report his remarks as follows. "In recent weeks, plaintiffs' lawyers have published opinion pieces in Gulf Coast newspapers attacking BP for identifying grave problems with the administration of a settlement we reached with them last year. But it turns out that many of the "families and businesses" really being helped are the lawyers' own. We offer the following facts in response to the plaintiffs' lawyers' op-eds so readers of this publication can make an informed judgment about the settlement and whether it's working "exactly" as intended.

21 Mar 2012

BP Whistle-Blower Seeks Shutdown of Atlantis in Gulf of Mexico

BP Plc.’s Atlantis platform, its second-largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico, should be shut down until it’s proven to comply with U.S. safety and environmental laws, a lawyer for a whistle-blower told a judge. BP misled U.S. offshore regulators to win operating permits for its Atlantis platform, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of New Orleans, according to the whistle-blower. The facility produced an average of 60,000 barrels of oil daily last year and is capable of producing as much as 200,000 barrels a day, according to data on London-based BP’s website. “Atlantis is presently not fit for service under normal engineering standards,” David Perry, a lawyer for former BP contractor Kenneth Abbott, said at a hearing in federal court in Houston.