In this Wednesday, April 21, 2010, file photo, oil can be seen in the Gulf of Mexico, more than 50 miles southeast of Venice on Louisiana’s tip, as a large plume of smoke rises from fires on BP’s Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.NEW ORLEANS – BP wants its money back – hundreds of millions of dollars of it – but a federal judge said Wednesday that the oil giant must stand by the agreement it made with the companies it compensated for losses blamed on the 2010 Gulf oil spill.
BP argued that a flawed funding formula enabled nearly 800 businesses to overestimate their spill-related claims.
One construction company hundreds of miles from the coast received $13.2 million, but deserved $4.8 million at most, BP said. Another company selling “animals and animal skins” was overpaid about $14 million, and about 50 others shouldn’t have been paid at all, the company said.
About 150 claimants should return a total of $185 million, and overpayments to the rest haven’t been calculated, attorney Kevin Downey argued.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier was not persuaded, thwarting BP’s latest attempt to control potential liabilities now approaching $50 billion.