BP calls for oil spill compensation chief to be sacked

Patrick Juneau, who was appointed as claims administrator in 2012, told a court that he “didn’t represent any claimants in the spill”, BP said, despite alleged new evidence that he “advocated” for a number of supposed victims of the spill in 2010 and 2011.

The company argued that Mr Juneau had a duty to get a written waiver for the alleged conflict of interest, but did not even try to do so, BP said. Instead, he allegedly made “ambiguous and incomplete” disclosures to court, telling the judge that he “didn’t have any involvement in anything in the spill….didn’t represent any claimants in the spill, wasn’t representing any defendants in the spill, had really had no connection with the spill per se”.

“This calls into question Mr Juneau’s ability to carry out his duties and creates an unacceptable appearance of bias.”

BP’s attack against the claims administrator is the latest twist in a long-running row over the way payouts are being awarded for the 2010 spill, which killed 11 men and caused billions of dollars’ worth of damage to businesses along the American coastline.

In 2012, BP agreed a catch-all deal to compensate victims of the disaster, which it thought would lead to around $7.8bn (£5.2bn) of payouts. However, it has been forced to revise that figure upwards several times to north of $9bn after Mr Juneau and his team awarded payments to hundreds of people who had not incurred any demonstrable loss.

As news of the payouts spread, the claims flooded in at the rate of up to 10,000 a month. Many of them were being lodged by companies situated hundreds of miles from the spill, some of which had actually seen an uplift in business following the explosion, or by companies that, according to BP, could not demonstrate a link between their losses and the disaster.

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