United States/Great Britain - British Petroleum will likely have to pay the entire bill of $42-billion after it failed to transfer some of the cost to Transocean, a contractor it worked with when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.
U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier ruled BP must uphold a clause in its deal with the company protecting it from compensatory damage claims filed against it. However he has left open the chance Transocean will have to pay some or all punitive damages and civil penalties the U.S. government may impose upon it under the Clean Water Act.
It's estimated BP will have to pay anywhere from 3.5 to more than 20-billion dollars in civil fines alone to the workers of the Gulf.
The ruling was most likely influenced by the fact that while Transocean owned the rig itself, BP owned most of the Macondo well that blew up, leading to the spill.
Initially, according to Reuters, BP sought to shift the cost of the disaster, to Transocean.
Lou Colasuonno, Transocean's spokesman, said the ruling is a victory and it "discredits BP's ongoing attempts to evade both its contractual and financial obligations."
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