The White House has said the US federal government will send a $69 million bill to BP for spending incurred from the authorities' response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The news came as the oil giant's chief executive said it had achieved an 'important milestone' on clearing a pipe from a blown-out Gulf of Mexico well.
'We have cleared the riser from the top of the wellhead and the team is working to complete the clean-up operation before we put the cap on top of the well,' Tony Hayward told reporters at BP's US headquarters in Houston.
He also said BP was committed to cleaning up the spill, the largest in US history. 'We will meet our obligations to all stakeholders,' he said.
Double downgrade for BP
Earlier, two credit rating agencies lowered BP's rating. Fitch cut BP from AA+ to AA and placed it on negative watch, citing risks arising from the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster. Moody's has also lowered BP's ratings to Aa1 from Aa2, citing the impact of oil spill.
'The downgrade of BP's ratings reflects Fitch's opinion that risks to both BP's business and financial profile continue to increase following the Deepwater Horizon accident in the US Gulf of Mexico,' Fitch said.
The six-week-old spill, now the worst in US history, began with an April 20 explosion that ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers.
More than 125 miles of Louisiana coast have been contaminated, triggering long-term fears for the region's already endangered wildlife.
The BP oil spill, which began in April, is causing an ecological and economic catastrophe along the US Gulf Coast. Many thousands of fishermen, shrimpers and other seafood workers have been idled for weeks by government-imposed fishing restrictions that were expanded yesterday to cover 37% of US waters in the Gulf.
BP does not expect to be able to fully choke off the flow until August, when two emergency relief wells are due for completion. BP, which has lost one-third of its market value, or about $67 billion, since the blow-out, saw its shares stabilise yesterday after sharp declines in London and Wall Street a day earlier.
