Oil Spill, Deepwater Horizon | featured news

BP will pay approximately $4.5 billion and plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a settlement with the U.S. government over the deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the London-based oil giant announced Thursday.

A partial settlement of claims made against BP for the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is very close, sources tell the BBC.

Oil giant BP is back in the black, announcing profits of $5.3 billion just a year after the Deepwater Horizon disaster left it facing heavy losses.

Only about 26 percent of the oil from the Deepwater Horizon leak is still in the water or onshore, and most of it is diluted and breaking down rapidly, officials say.

The owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, which is spewing oil into the Gulf of Mexico, on Tuesday criticized President Barack Obama's six-month ban on deepwater drilling.

Federal officials said Sunday that engineers have succeeded in vacuuming up some of the oil that has been leaking from the Deepwater Horizon's drilling well, the first progress in containing the BP spill since the Horizon exploded and sank last month.