Louisiana comes to $13.5 million settlement with MOEX over Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill

GRETNA – The Louisiana Attorney General's office has released a statement regarding a Clean Water Act settlement with one of the entities involved in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Houston-based MOEX Offshore 2007, a subsidiary of Japanese-based Mitsui Group, had a 10 percent share in the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

Under the agreement Louisiana will receive $13.5 million in total to split in half with $6.75 million going towards remediation of environmental damages through the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality's Hazardous Waste Site Cleanup Fund. The other $6.75 million will be directed to the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority's Coastal Forest Conservation Initiative.

"We are pleased with this recovery from MOEX, but expect much larger recoveries from the remaining defendants," said Attorney General Buddy Caldwell.

Although MOEX has cleared up its direct monetary responsibility to the state more funds are likely to be coming from the company in a variety of ways including multi-district litigation covering economic and natural resource damage, state law claims for fish and wildlife civil penalties filed by coastal parishes and district attorneys and a portion of the U.S. government's penalty recovery under the Supplemental Environmental Projects provision of the Clean Water Act.