BP: U.S. Gulf Returning to Pre-Spill Condition

Affected areas are recovering faster than predicted. For example, in 2010 the U.S. Coast Guard documented 86 miles of marsh that were categorized as heavily oiled. And by early 2014, after the response effort as well as natural attenuation, just 0.7 miles remained heavily oiled and were recovering naturally.

Injured natural resources are being restored in an unprecedented fashion. In 2011, BP voluntarily agreed to spend $1 billion on these projects to expedite the restoration of natural resources in the Gulf while the NRDA process was ongoing. No company has ever undertaken a program of this scale before or since. As of December 2014, BP and the federal and state natural resource trustees had agreed on 54 early restoration projects totaling about $698 million.

The NRDA is the process through which the U.S. government, state agencies and BP conduct studies to identify injuries to natural resources resulting from the Deepwater Horizon accident, as well as the best way of restoring injured resources and the amount of money required to do so. This ongoing NRD assessment is the largest environmental evaluation of its kind ever conducted, spanning nearly five years and costing around $1.3 billion to date. BP also has committed to pay $500 million over 10 years to support independent research through the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative.

In addition to those costs, BP has spent more than $28 billion on response, cleanup, early restoration and claims payments.

Environmental data collected by NRDA and response efforts are available at: http://gulfsciencedata.bp.com

The full Gulf of Mexico Environmental Recovery and Restoration report is available at: http://www.bp.com/gulf5yearreport

For more information on our progress toward fulfilling our commitment to economic and environmental restoration, please visit http://www.theStateoftheGulf.com.


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