Federal prosecutors said yesterday that a New Orleans-based oil company has agreed to turn over a $432 million cleanup trust fund and pay an additional $43 million to settle a federal lawsuit over cleaning up abandoned wells leaking since 2004, the Associated Press reported. “This settlement represents an important down payment to address impacts from the longest-running oil spill in U.S. history,” Nicole LeBoeuf, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency’s National Ocean Service, said in a news release from the U.S. Department of Justice. Attorneys for Taylor Oil Co., which agreed to drop three lawsuits challenging government cleanup orders and measures, did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment. As is common in such agreements, the proposed settlement said Taylor does not admit any liability. U.S. District Judge Greg Gerard Guidry will decide whether to approve the proposed consent decree after a 40-day public comment period. Taylor’s website states that it sold all its oil and gas assets in 2008 and exists now only to respond to the toppled platform. The company has agreed to turn over all remaining assets after liquidation, the government said. The trust fund was created to plug the wells, permanently decommission the facility and clean contaminated soil. One of Taylor’s suits, filed in 2016, sought to get back the remaining money, claiming regulators had broken the agreement requiring it to put $666 million into the fund.
