BP oil spill trial wraps up, fines still undecided

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The final phase of a sprawling civil litigation stemming from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill wrapped up Monday, but the ruling over how much pollution fines the oil giant BP should pay remains undetermined.

U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier on Monday declared the end of the two-year-long trial at a federal court in New Orleans, Louisiana after rejecting a request for postponement from BP, local newspaper the Times-Picayune reported.

Barbier is expected to come up with a ruling on how much BP and its partner Anadarko Petroleum Corp. should pay in pollution fines for the oil spill in coming months, if not weeks.

In an earlier ruling, Barbier declared that 3.19 million barrels of oil was discharged to the Gulf of Mexico. BP could face a maximum 13.7 billion U.S. dollars in fines if the highest per-barrel fine of 4,300 dollars is applied by the judge.

BP sought a lower penalty and argued its effort to clean up the spill and already-paid compensations helped minimize the impact of the disaster.

Anadarko Petroleum Corp., a minority owner of the ill-fated well, was also part of the proceeding and has been fighting the government's push for penalties exceeding 1 billion dollars.

Starting from February 2013, the civil trial was divided into three phases. The legal liability and the size of the oil spill were determined respectively in the first two phases while how much fines the responsible parties should pay awaits to be ruled.

On April 20, 2010, BP's Deepwater Horizon drill platform caught fire and exploded, killing 11 workers and triggering one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. Endi

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