BP has agreed to pay a record $50.6m fine for safety violations at its Texas City refinery, officials have said.
The company is already liable for billions in fines and compensation payouts in the wake of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico after a deadly explosion sank the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April.
BP is also currently on criminal probation following a $373m plea deal reached in 2007 over a series of probes into an oil pipeline leak in Alaska, price fixing in the propane gas market and a deadly 2005 explosion at the Texas City refinery.
Lawyers representing some of the 15 workers killed and 170 injured in the Texas City blast are hoping that BP's probation will be revoked now that it has admitted to repeated failures to meet safety standards.
BP was initially fined $21m after the Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined that BP failed to adequately protect its workers ahead of the 2005 blast.
BP invested about $1bn on safety upgrades, but was hit with the $50.6m fine after inspectors determined in 2009 that the company still had not met its commitments.
Those findings should have been enough to trigger a default of the plea deal, said Texas attorney Brent Coon, who represents many of the victims of the 2005 blast.
Mr Coon hopes BP's admission of guilt will force the Department of Justice to revoke probation and reopen the case to additional fines and possibly action against executives.
BP has already paid an estimated $1bn to $2bn in civil penalties for people hurt or killed in the blast and a record $50m criminal fine for environmental damage.
But Mr Coon said the fines have had little impact on BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster proves it has not learned its lesson.
‘They cut corners wherever they can. It's a bad habit of theirs and it needs to be broken, he said.
A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice declined to comment on what impact the settlement could have on BP's probation or how this admission might affect the potentially criminal investigation into BP's role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP did not comment.
The settlement comes days after the state of Texas sued BP for the mass release of pollutants after a fire at the Texas City refinery earlier this year.
