AP/ March 23, 2012, 9:03 PM

5,000 new claims filed after BP settlement

In this April 21, 2010 file photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, fire boat response crews spray water on the blazing remnants of BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

In this April 21, 2010 file photo provided by the U.S. Coast Guard, fire boat response crews spray water on the blazing remnants of BP's Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig.

(AP) NEW ORLEANS - More than 1,000 claimants have received around $27 million in the two weeks since a court-supervised administrator took over the processing of claims spawned by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The claims are being paid from BP PLC's $20 billion compensation fund.

A statement Friday by Patrick Juneau, the new claims administrator, also says nearly 5,000 new claims have been filed since the process shifted from the Gulf Coast Claims Facility to the court on March 8.

The transition is part of a settlement agreement between BP and lawyers representing more than 100,000 individuals and businesses. The parties will ask U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to give preliminary approval to the settlement next month.

BP estimates it will pay out $7.8 billion through the settlement.

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5 Comments Add a Comment
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ron348 says:
Thankfully the GCCF is now closed so the new court monitored agency will be able to quickly pay the claimants. I found a site that has the latest bp news at www.bpsettlement.com
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flexsf says:
No amount of money will heal the damage caused from oil in the ocean. The BP corporation should be destroyed, and it's executives should be imprisoned until they're dead.
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netjunkie1 says:
So................who is getting arrested for the disaster?
BRAZIL made no hesitation. Cheveron is in deep water....so to speak.
What happened to environmental laws? What about the fact they were celebrating safety when the DeepSea Horizon exploded and sank killing 11 people onboard? Was there not a crime committed?
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ConSense replies:
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NO, there wasn't a crime committed. It's not against the law to celebrate safety, even if you aren't. Why do morons always start yelling "crime" when accidents happen?
josephp5 replies:
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BP committed several crimes. They were required by law to use a working blowout preventer, but they knowingly used one that they knew didn't work. They were required by law to file with the EPA a valid spill cleanup plan, but they knowingly filed a bogus plan copied from one of their Arctic wells---a plan so bogus that it mentioned walruses and polar bears (which of course don't exist in the Gulf. These were not accidents---they were crimes.