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Feinberg to increase payments to Gulf shrimpers hit hard by oil spill
The administrator of a multibillion-dollar fund aimed at compensating victims of last year’s massive oil spill is planning to increase payments to Gulf shrimpers who have been hit hard by the disaster.
“I think that we’ve got to do better by the shrimpers,” Kenneth Feinberg, the Washington lawyer who heads the Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF), told the House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. “We’re now reviewing ways to make the program even more generous for the shrimping industry.”
Feinberg told reporters that he hopes to unveil a proposal in the coming weeks to make more generous payments to shrimpers who can show that they’ve seen major economic losses as a result of the spill, which dumped 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf.
“I’ve been down there and everywhere I turn down there the shrimpers and the elected officials are concerned particularly about the future of white shrimp and shrimp harvesting in the Louisiana area of the Gulf,” Feinberg said. “That’s really where we’re hearing the most concern. And it’s rather uniform and it’s rather unanimous.”
Under the new rules, oysters harvesters receive four times their 2010 earnings and oyster leaseholders receive seven times their 2010 earnings. The rules also give shrimpers two times their 2010 earnings.
Feinberg said Thursday that he intends to increase the compensation level for shrimpers, but he offered no specifics.
“We’re thinking of various options; we’ll see,” he said. “But we really have to do something about the shrimpers.”
BP agreed in June 2010 to set up a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the oil spill. President Obama later tapped Feinberg, who headed the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund, to oversee the distribution of the money.
Feinberg’s GCCF has doled out about $5.5 billion during the last 14 months, to more than 200,000 victims of the spill.
