BP has abruptly ended its push to remove the administrator of claims arising from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, announcing today that it is satisfied with efforts to improve fraud prevention and detection in the claims program.
The oil giant had long criticized how Patrick Juneau ran the program that arose from a 2012 settlement with businesses claiming economic losses from the spill that followed the explosion of the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon in April 2010. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in November rejected BP’s efforts to remove Juneau. Attorneys for BP, business plaintiffs and Juneau argued the matter before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in February and a decision was pending.
However, The Associated Press reports a filing today says all parties had agreed to a dismissal of the appeal. BP issued a statement saying former FBI director Louis Freeh, appointed by the courts as a special master to watch for fraud in the settlement program, aided a review of the program. The review, BP said, demonstrated that improvements have been made, and continue to be made in the program.
“This marks the beginning of a new and more productive relationship between BP and the claims program,” John Minge, chairman and president of BP America, says in a news release.
In its earlier court battles, BP had accused Juneau of mismanagement and spending excessively on administration. It also said Juneau should be ousted because he failed to disclose a conflict of interest—spill-related work for the state of Louisiana before he was hired as claims administrator; and because he improperly expedited some claims over others.
Barbier had ruled that BP knew of Juneau’s earlier consulting work, and he found no merit in the argument that some claims were improperly expedited. BP renewed the arguments regarding Juneau’s earlier work at last month’s 5th Circuit hearing but made no mention of them in its statement today or the latest court filing.
The BP-leased Deepwater Horizon was drilling about 50 miles off the Southeast Louisiana coast when it exploded the night of April 20, 2010. The blowout of BP’s Macondo well killed 11 rig workers and set off the nation’s worst offshore oil disaster.
