Gulf Oil Spill of 2010: Liability & Damage Issues

The 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident produced the largest oil spill that has occurred in U.S. waters, releasing over 200 million gallons into the Gulf of Mexico. BP has estimated the combined oil spill costs, including cleanup activities, natural resource and economic damages, potential Clean Water Act (CWA) penalties, to be approximately $41 billion. This book examines the many issues raised by the spill for policymakers, including the ability of the existing oil spill liability and compensation framework to respond to a catastrophic spill. The framework determines who is responsible for paying for oil spill cleanup costs and the economic and natural resource damages from an oil spill; how these costs and damages are defined and the degree to which, and conditions in which, the costs and damages are limited and/or shared by other parties, including general taxpayers.