Kenneth Feinberg’s plan to settle oil-spill claims met with opposition
By Steven Mufson, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, November 22, 2010; 7:16 PM
Tuesday (TODAY!) is the day that Feinberg wants to end emergency payments by BP’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility to individuals and businesses for damage inflicted by the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. After Thanksgiving, Feinberg will start offering lump-sum payments to people ready to settle all present and future claims – giving up their rights to file lawsuits.
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Earlier this month, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley (R) called Feinberg’s claims process “extortion,” and outgoing Alabama Attorney General Troy King issued a “consumer alert” warning people that Feinberg “works for BP.” Feinberg was named by President Obama, though BP is paying him and four other lawyers at his firm $850,000 a month to run the fund.
BP Gulf-Leak Estimates Slowed Efforts to Kill Well
Jim Efstathiou Jr., Bloomberg News
11/22/10
BP Plc “impeded” efforts to kill an out-of-control well in the Gulf of Mexico by underestimating the amount of oil gushing into the water, the staff of a presidential panel investigating the disaster said in a report.
Estimates of a 1,000-barrel-a-day leak after a drilling rig exploded April 20 delayed planning for techniques to seal the well, staff of the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill said today. A U.S. government-appointed team of scientists in August said the well was gushing about 62,000 barrels a day after the blowout and 53,000 barrels when it was capped on July 15.
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“Had BP not shown such aggressive indifference to the size of the disaster, and the oil industry to preparing for such an event, then perhaps early actions could have made a difference in stopping this spill,” Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said today in a statement.
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The Obama administration blocked release of worst-case government estimates of the spill rate, the commission staff said in an Oct. 6 report. The move undermined public confidence in the U.S. response and may have hindered efforts to staunch the flow.The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “wanted to make public some of its long-term, worst-case discharge models for the Deepwater Horizon spill, and requested approval to do so from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget,” according to the staff paper. “The Office of Management and Budget denied NOAA’s request.”
Do you think Darrell Issa is going to want to investigate this? Do you think the Obama Administration is blameless?
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