Robin's Blog for Dauphin Island

BP, federal government remain silent on when company will fund Gulf oil spill account

Published: Monday, July 26, 2010, 6:35 PM

Brendan Kirby, Press-Register

MOBILE, Alabama -- Pressed again today about when BP PLC will make good on its promise to set up a compensation fund to pay Gulf oil spill claims, representatives of the company and the federal government remained largely silent.
   
BP spokesman Daren Beaudo said the company had no new information on the negotiations surrounding the $20 billion pledge.
   

View full size(Press-Register/Victor Calhoun)Ken Feinberg ... can't say when BP funding will start.

"When we have something more detailed it will be shared," he wrote in an e-mail.
   
Neither Beaudo, nor the U.S. Department of Justice, which is handling negotiations for the government, would discuss how long those talks might take, whether there are serious substantive differences or where the deposited money would be held while claims are processed.
   
Justice spokeswoman Hannah August said in an e-mail that the department will not comment on ongoing negotiations.
   
Beaudo referred the Press-Register to a June 16 news release announcing the decision to set up the fund. It sated that BP would deposit $3 billion between July and September followed by $2 billion in the last three months of the year.
   
After that, the firm pledged to deposit $1.25 billion per quarter until reaching a total of $20 billion.
   
Ken Feinberg, the man that President Barack Obama placed in charge of deciding how to spend that money, said today that how long it would take BP to fund the account is a "fair question," but one he cannot answer.
   
"I can't say," Feinberg said. "We're trying to accelerate things, but that's not on my watch. The negotiation of the escrow and the deposit, that is between the administration-DOJ and BP."