BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill
Fire boat response crews battle the blazing remnants of the offshore oil rig Deepwater Horizon, off Louisiana, in this April 21, 2010 file handout image. Reuters/U.S. Coast Guard/Files/Handout

With the US$5.2 billion (A$6.85 billion) hit on BP’s quarterly profit due to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the oil giant’s total bill for the disaster would reach a record US$61.6 billion (A$81.1 billion). However, BP said the pretax charge is likely the last one related to the Deepwater Horizon accident.

Considered one of the worst environmental disasters in US history, the pretax charge would be the last to have a material impact on the financial performance of British Petroleum, reports Marketwatch. The British oil giant hopes it would end six years of lawsuits, fines and cleanup costs.

The April 2010 blowout of the Macondo well killed 11 employees and spilled 3 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico for almost three months. But BP says that until now it does not have an estimate on the ultimate corporate cost of the disaster.

BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said in 2015 that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and its aftermath was a “near death experience” for the oil giant. It shook BP to the core and resulted in a complete change in the oil giant’s organisational structure, BBC reports.

In June, BP ended one of the last lawsuits related to the oil spill when it paid investors US$175 million (A$230 million) over business risk disclosure. Before that, BP paid about US$20 billion (A$26.3 billion) agreement with federal and state governments. In contrast, the total cost of the 1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill was about US$4.3 billion (A$5.66 billion).

“Today we can estimate all the material liabilities remaining from the incident … Importantly, we have a clear plan for managing these costs and it provides our investors with certainty going forward,” says Brian Gilvary, BP chief financial officer.

VIDEO: BP Puts a Price on its Massive Oil Spill: $61.6 Billion