Oil giant BP announced last night that it is suing the US Government for blocking it from getting new contracts following the 2010 Gulf of Mexico disaster.
The lawsuit – filed in the US District Court in southern Texas – claims keeping the ban in place risks causing the company “irreparable harm”.
Last November, America’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sprung the ban on BP, citing the company’s “lack of business integrity” after the Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 workers and gushed millions of barrels of oil into coastal waters.
The suspension only effects new contracts, not existing deals – but BP is one of the largest suppliers of fuel to the US government, including to the military, holding contracts worth more about £1billion, according to the suit.
The oil company claims the ban unfairly includes 21 of its subsidiaries that had nothing to do with the spill.
“We believe that the EPA’s action here is inappropriate and unjustified as a matter of law and policy, and we are pursuing our right to seek relief in federal court,” a BP spokesman said.
BP – whose estimated bill for the incident, including cleanup operations, now stands at £27.7billion – is also challenging a court interpretation of the settlement it signed up to in the wake of the disaster.
It says that it encourages businesses to claim for non-existent losses.
It recently announced plans to set aside a further £913million for disaster compensation as it struggled to stem a tide of allegedly spurious claims inflating its payout bill.
The company has just £196million left in the £13billion oilspill trust fund it set up after the catastrophe, with US gulf coast businesses having until April 2014 to make new claims.
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