The April 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster which occurred off the Louisiana coast left 11 people dead and irreversible damage to the environment. Now the Justice Department has reached a settlement with Transocean Ltd. for $1.4 billion. Transocean is the owner of the drilling rig that sank after the explosion which spanned the historic oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Associated Press reported that Transocean will pay the money in order to "resolve the department's civil and criminal probe of the company's role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster," according to two people who remained anonymous.
One of the people who is a law enforcement official said that the company would pay nearly $400 million in criminal penalties, $1 billion in civil penalties, and would plead guilty in violating the Clean Water Act.
Reuters reported that of the $400 million in fines that Transocean will pay in criminal fines, $150 million of that will go towards protecting the Gulf of Mexico, while another $150 will go towards spill prevention and response efforts.
"The bottom line to me is they now can put away the big black cloud that has been hanging over them," said Phil Weiss, an oil analyst at Argus Research to Reuters.
Reuters reported that BP and its contractors have tried to put blame on eachother since the massive oil spill. Haliburton Co, which had erformed cementing work on the Macondo Well is now the only company that has not settled.
The accident which was caused by an explosion from methane gas, led to a U.S. deepwater ban.
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