From Dan Froomkin at Huffington Post:
BP has managed to link the fate of its $20 billion oil spill victims compensation fund with its continued ability to pump oil from the Gulf of Mexico.
The voluntary trust agreement negotiated with the Department of Justice is not with the British-based multinational, or even with BP America, but with a fairly remote subsidiary, BP Exploration & Production Inc. (BPEC) -- a Delaware corporation that operates BP's Gulf oil leases.
So if BP's drilling revenues from the Gulf suddenly vanished, so, presumably, would the compensation fund, said Tyson Slocum, director of Public Citizen's Energy Program.
"This is a very advantageous agreement from BP's point of view," Slocum told the Huffington Post. "Because their big concern is that the Deepwater Horizon incident would result in sanctions that would significantly reduce BP's involvement in lucrative Gulf operations."
"But if you tie the compensation fund to Gulf of Mexico production, you are helping to guarantee BP's continued involvement in that market," he said.
