Deepwater oil spill, the largest in U.S. history, caused the deaths of nearly 400 people and damaged or destroyed more than 8,000 homes and businesses, including more than 5,000 at the Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana, according to federal officials and a U.N. report.
The BP spill, which killed 11 workers, left thousands more homeless, some without homes.
It also prompted a massive cleanup, with more than 100 million barrels of oil being recovered.
BP also agreed to pay $11.8 billion to the federal government and the state of Louisiana.
In the months after the spill, BP said it began to take steps to ensure the rig would never again operate near Louisiana.
It agreed to a safety program that will provide more than $10 billion in emergency relief to the Gulf region.
But it did not address other issues, including how to prevent future spills and how to reduce oil production.BP has said it will continue to make improvements to its safety systems and work with industry, federal officials, residents and other stakeholders.
The company has said its plan for the cleanup is to develop a “one-size-fits-all” approach to the cleanup, including a multi-stage approach to cleaning up the oil.
But environmental groups, including the U.K.-based environmental group Oil Change International, said BP’s plans for the recovery did not go far enough.
The group said BP was failing to adequately address the needs of residents and the public in the aftermath of the spill.
“It’s not enough to promise to clean up the spill with a single, one-size fits-all plan,” said Bill McKibben, director of the environment program at Oxfam America.
“It’s time for BP to do what it has promised and do the right thing.”
For decades, BP has been under pressure to change its approach to cleanups.
In 2009, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, BP agreed to set up an offshore cleanup program in the Gulf of Mexico, but not in the region as originally planned.
Instead, the company said it would set up its own cleanup site, known as Deepwater Blue.
BP agreed last year to set aside a quarter of its operating leases for the project.
In April, BP announced that it was ending the cleanup of its oil spill site in the Marcellus Shale in the U