BP Gulf Oil Spill Damage Valued at $17.2 Billion in New Study
- Tally published in journal Science was based on survey
- People asked what they’d be willing to pay to prevent damage
Smoke billows from controlled oil burns near the site of the BP Plc Deep Water Horizon oil spill site in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana, on June 19, 2010.
Photographer: Derick E. Hingle/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
BP Plc’s 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill caused damage to beaches, animals, fish and coral that the public values at $17.2 billion, according to a financial accounting released on the seventh anniversary of the disaster.
The tally, published Thursday in the journal Science, is based on a survey of thousands of Americans that asked what they’d be willing to pay to prevent the kind of impacts unleashed by the spill, which began with an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig on April 20, 2010.