Bloomberg said that the Environmental Protection Agency has lifted the ban on BP Plc to bid for contracts in the US and leases in the Gulf of Mexico. It could be recalled that the oil company caused one of the biggest environmental accidents in history when a massive spill blanketed the body of water in 2010. The Pentagon's biggest fuel supplier next week is set to acquire the right to drill in the Gulf.
The agreement reached by the regulator and BP, which will last five years, involves the oil company's compliance to a set of safety, ethics and corporate governance requirements. Moreover, Bloomberg said that an independent auditor has been assigned to review the company annually for the duration of the agreement.
The news agency said that the lifting of the ban is to be considered as a milestone for the London-based company, as it has seen itself battling lawsuits left and right due to the oil spill. The legal costs to address the lawsuits and cleaning the Gulf had BP selling $38 billion in assets. A New Orleans judge is mulling over BP's degree of responsibility for the oil spill and the fines the latter would be paying under the Clean Water Act.
Chairman and president John Mingé, of BP America said in an emailed statement, "After a lengthy negotiation, BP is pleased to have reached this resolution, which we believe to be fair and reasonable."
Analysts at Deutsche Bank AG had said today in a note to clients, "It marks another step, in our view, toward the rehabilitation of BP's reputation, standing and position in the key North American market."
Not everyone is happy about the EPA's decision. Director Tyson Slocum of the Public Citizen's Energy Program in Washington believed that the decision was ill-timing. He said in a statement, "(This) lets a corporate felon and repeat offender off the hook for its crimes against people and the environment. (BP) was on criminal probation at the time of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, and it has failed to prove that it is a responsible contractor."
