US authorities plan to propose a US$16 billion settlement to British energy giant BP for civil claims related to the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Wall Street Journal said.
Citing people familiar with the discussions, the newspaper said late on Friday that the settlement would cover fines BP owes under the Clean Water Act, a federal water pollution law, as well as payments under the Natural Resources Damage Assessment, an environmental evaluation.
However, the Journal said that it remained unclear whether the government had formally proposed the offer to BP.
The April 20, 2010, explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, operated by BP off New Orleans, killed 11 people and spilled hundreds of millions of liters of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. It took four months to cap the well.
BP said on Tuesday it would “vigorously defend” itself in court against what it termed “excessive” fines for the incident.
The company already pleaded guilty in November last year, to criminal charges and agreed to pay a record US$4.5 billion in criminal fines.
It reached a US$7.8 billion settlement early last year to cover the bulk of the outstanding private claims for economic loss, property damage and medical problems.
BP has paid out US$10 billion to businesses, individuals and local governments impacted by the spill and spent more than US$14 billion on the response and cleanup.
The oil firm also remains on the hook for billions in additional damages, including the cost of environmental rehabilitation.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by