BP Announces Second Block Grant of $25 million Each to Florida, Mississippi and Alabama

Discoverer Enterprise at the MC 252 location in the Gulf of Mexico on June 10, 2010, Photo © BP p.l.c.

On Saturday, BP announced that it was providing the states of Florida, Alabama and Mississippi with additional $25 million grants to continue the implementation of the states’ Area Contingency Plans.

To be clear, each individual state is getting $25 million.

These $25 million grants are additions to the previous $25 million block grants that BP announced on May 5 to help accelerate the implementation of the States’ Area Contingency Plans. After that on May 17, BP also announced additional tourism grants, $25 million to Florida and $15 million each to Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“Working in partnership with the state is important to an effective spill response. So we are pleased to make these additional funds available per the Governor’s request,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s Chief Operating Officer, Exploration and Production.

These grants are going to help lessen the impact of the oil spill on the above named states. However, I do think that BP should be thinking about giving a bit bigger grants as $25 million per state is not very much.

“This money will be used to ensure we’re aggressive in attacking any part of the spill that comes our way and to provide additional protection for our most environmentally sensitive areas along our coastline,” said Governor Haley Barbour. “This also prevents us from tapping into state money to fight the spill, and I appreciate BP’s timely response to our request.”

Well, if the above quote is true, the states had to request the grant. I think that’s rather unthoughtful of BP as you would think that they would do it by themselves and not have to be persuaded.

Either way, it is nice to see that BP is still giving out money to help the states.

In other news on the BP oil spill, almost 3,600 vessels are now involved in the response effort, including skimmers, tugs, barges and recovery vessels. Operations to skim oil from the surface of the water now have recovered, in total, approximately 383,000 barrels (16.1 million gallons) of oily liquid.

Also, the lower marine riser package (LMRP) containment cap, which was installed on June 3, continues to collect oil and gas flowing from the MC252 well. It transports them to the Discover Enterprise drillship on the surface.

Preparations for additional planned enhancements to the LMRP containment cap system continue to progress.