Anadarko Petroleum Corp. said that it should pay as little as $850 million in damages over the 2005 spinoff of paint materials company Tronox Inc., 94 percent below the maximum amount a federal bankruptcy judge said it might owe, Reuters reported yesterday. The estimate was provided on Monday, one month after Bankruptcy Judge Allan Gropper said that a higher payout of $14.17 billion might be in order because Anadarko's Kerr-McGee Corp unit intended to harm Tronox creditors by saddling the spinoff with unsustainable environmental liabilities. Tronox filed for chapter 11 protection in 2009 and also sued Anadarko and Kerr-McGee, which Anadarko had bought three years earlier, claiming the spinoff was fraudulent because of the environmental liabilities.
