BP has agreed to pay $175 million to settle claims by U.S. investors that its managers lied about the size of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill to prop up its stock price, removing the company’s last major overhang from the disaster.
Bloomberg reports the investors, who blamed BP for massive losses when the true scope of the spill was revealed, had sought as much as $2.5 billion. The settlement averts a trial that was set for July in a Houston federal court.
The settlement announcement Thursday came shortly after a ruling by U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison to narrow the evidence that could have been presented to a jury. The decision, which would have benefited BP at trial, limited the management statements that investors could claim affected the stock price.
BP shares plunged by more than 40% in the weeks after the April 2010 disaster, as it became clear the company couldn’t immediately contain the spill. More than 4 million barrels of oil escaped into the Gulf of Mexico during the 87 days London-based BP took to control the well.
The investors’ lawsuit, led by the public employee pension funds of New York and Ohio, revolved around statements made shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blew up in April 2010. Those statements also were central to BP’s agreement in 2012 to pay $525 million to resolve claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission that the London-based company underestimated the size of the spill to bolster stock prices. BP also pleaded guilty to a felony count of obstruction of Congress related to spill estimates.
