BP, Mexico reach settlement on oil spill: Watchdog

MEXICO CITY: British Petroleum struck a deal with the Mexican government to pay a vastly reduced fine for environmental damage caused by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, a watchdog group alleged on Friday.

According to PODER, a corporate transparency group, BP secretly negotiated to pay Mexico $25.5 million — a fraction what it paid in the United States — even as it invested hundreds of millions in President Enrique Pena Nieto’s prized project, the reopening of the Mexican energy sector to FOREIGN irms.

“The Mexican government always preferred to reach an out-of-court settlement with the company, ignoring THE Interests of THE ishing Communities that were affected,” said PODER, a Mexico City- and New York-based organization that carried out a two-year investigation of the secret negotiations together with US news site Buzzfeed.

The Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20, 2010, spilling 793 million liters of oil.

The disaster coated huge stretches of coastline in black tides in both the United States and Mexico, and lethally covered tens of thousands of animals in oily muck.

In the United States, the British irm HAS PAID out more than $60 Billion in damages.

But in Mexico it struck a deal to pay less than one-half of one percent of that igure, Even As It simultaneously became a key player in the massive energy privatization launched by Pena Nieto in 2013, according to the report.