BP says they have spent nearly four billion pounds since April, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in Mexico.

The staggering sums have accumulated in scarcely three months since the disaster. BP attribute the majority of the sum to their initial spill response, namely the 31,000 people deployed in the numerous containment attempts.

The gushing oil well was finally stopped on the 15th July 2010. The now plugged Macondo well in the Mississippi Canyon, is the first drilling relief well expected to start intercepting oil within the next week.

The amounting costs do not end there for BP. The global energy giant have received a whopping 145,000 claims for compensation by companies and individuals affected by the spill. The compensation costs amount to a total of almost £205 million, to satisfy 103,900 of these claims.

An estimated 4.9 million barrels of the finite resource, oil has been lost since the disaster occurred and was stopped on the 15th of last month. So far the clean up operations have skimmed 826,000 barrels of oily liquid.

Clearly the clean up of this environmental disaster is an ongoing operation. A large amount of oil remains under the seabed. BP are yet to comment on questions concerning the future of the oilfield, once the wells have been successfully maintained.

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