Vitter, Sessions Introduce Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act
Press Release
Vitter, Sessions Introduce Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act
U.S. Sens. David Vitter and Jeff Sessions today introduced the Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act, which would dramatically increase the liability of companies responsible for oil spills. The legislation would establish a new liability cap equal to the last four quarters of the responsible party's profits or double the ¬current limit, whichever is greater.
"As it stands, the cap on damages is too low, which leaves taxpayers exposed to the risk of paying the steep costs of cleaning up oil spills. Making a company at fault pay their last four quarters of profits is a much more effective way to ensure that energy companies actually pay for their mistakes without chasing many of them out of business," said Vitter. "And under our bill, the bigger companies would be liable for more than the $10 billion cap others propose."
"The Deepwater Horizon incident is a very serious disaster, and it is heartbreaking to think of the lives that have been lost and the environmental damage that could result. Oil continues to spill into the Gulf, and stopping it immediately must be our highest priority," Sessions, a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said. "There are lessons to be learned from this crisis. This bill would provide for important research and additional environmental safeguards to prevent this sort of catastrophe from happening in the future. Our nation depends on energy exploration on the Outer Continental Shelf, and we owe it to ourselves to do all we can to make certain that oil and gas production is conducted under the strongest environmental protections."
The OSRA bill would also establish much greater reserve requirements for the amount of oil containment barriers, known as "boom," capable of withstanding up to six-foot waves, and would direct work on technology to effectively cap leaks like the one currently gushing in the Gulf. Additionally, the bill would require a thorough report by September 1 from all agencies involved in the response to the recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico to evaluate the effectiveness of the practices and procedures used in the response.
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