A Chinese court has ordered US oil giant ConocoPhillips to pay additional compensation to 21 fishermen over an oil spill more than four years ago, a statement said Friday.
The spill in June of 2011 at the offshore Penglai field, jointly developed by ConocoPhillips and state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), allowed more than 3,000 barrels of oil and oil-based mud — used as a lubricant in drilling — to vent into Bohai Bay.
It polluted an area estimated to be more than eight times the size of Singapore.
The Tianjin Maritime Court ordered the firm to pay 1.7 million yuan ($268,000) to fishermen who refused a compensation package from the two companies in 2012 and sued them.
ConocoPhillips and CNOOC had previously paid a total of 2.68 billion yuan in 2012 for the spill, with 1.0 billion yuan to compensate fishermen and the rest for damage to the marine ecosystem, the official Xinhua news agency reported.
In the latest ruling, the Tianjin court declined to award the fishermen damages from CNOOC because it was not the oil field operator and did not control the source of contamination at the time of the accident, the statement said.
ConocoPhillips was ordered to pay the compensation within 10 days of the verdict, it said, but did not say when the ruling was handed down.
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