Eighteen months after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, lawmakers heard from Kenneth Feinberg, administrator of the BP Compensation Fund, about the status of payments to victims of the spill. Representative Doc Hastings (R-WA), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, held this hearing to ask Feinberg "how is it working?"
Feinberg admitted some problems with the process. He said commercial shrimpers have not received adequate support from the fund. “The Gulf Coast Claims Facility must be more receptive with the commercial shrimping industry in Louisiana,” he said.
Feinberg said he will announce new rules to handle commercial shrimpers “in the next few weeks.”
Administered by the US government, BP has paid out $6 billion dollars of an escrow fund worth $20 billion for those whose livelihoods suffered from the spill. One million people have requested compensation and concerns about how the money is being dispersed have plagued Feinberg since the fund was created in 2010. The compensation fund will expire in August of 2013.
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in April of 2010 and killed 11 men and spilled nearly 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.