BP raised the amount it will pay this year for the Deepwater Horizon disaster as thousands of lawsuits related to the biggest oil spill in U.S. history start to wind down, Bloomberg reports.
The latest liabilities will add to the more than $60 billion of penalties the London-based company has already racked up.
BP will record a new $1.7 billion charge in the fourth quarter of 2017 and pay $1 billion of that bill in 2018, it says in a statement. The remainder will be distributed over a number of years.
The latest charge covers payments to business owners in the area like seafood producers and tourism providers, BP says. The company’s spill-related payouts will rise to $3 billion in 2018 from an earlier estimate of $2 billion, while those for 2017 will remain at $5.5 billion.
The 2010 explosion at a well in the Gulf of Mexico threatened BP’s existence after 11 people were killed and millions of barrels of oil spilled into the sea.
