 Lee Celano / Reuters, file A hard hat from an oil worker lies in oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on East Grand Terre Island, Louisiana in this June 8, 2010 photo. By Ian Johnston, NBC News Updated at 11:41 a.m. ET: BP will pay approximately $4.5 billion and plead guilty to criminal charges as part of a settlement with the U.S. government over the deadly Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, the London-based oil giant announced Thursday. BP said it would plead guilty to 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect relating to the death of 11 workers, one misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, one misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and one felony count of obstruction of Congress. More details of the settlement over the largest accidental marine oil spill in history were expected to be revealed later Thursday at a press conference in New Orleans by Attorney General Eric Holder and other federal and local officials. Earlier, in a statement posted on its website, London-based BP said the settlement talks included claims made against the company by the Securities & Exchange Commission. The statement said the "proposed resolutions" were "not expected to cover federal civil claims" and others. The talks are separate from a March settlement in which BP agreed to pay affected parties $7.8 billion for damages The Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, sank after the April 20, 2010, explosion. The well on the sea floor spewed an estimated 206 million gallons of crude oil, soiling sensitive tidal estuaries and beaches, killing wildlife and shutting vast areas of the Gulf to commercial fishing The spill exposed lax government oversight and led to a temporary ban on deepwater drilling while officials and the oil industry studied the risks, worked to make it safer and developed better disaster plans.  Gerald Herbert / AP The April 20, 2010, explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon rig triggered a summer of oil spills, cleanup, lost jobs and plenty of frustration. View select images from the disaster. The cost of BP's spill far surpassed the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989. Exxon ultimately settled with the U.S. government for $1 billion, which would be about $1.8 billion today. The government and plaintiffs' attorneys also sued Transocean Ltd., the rig's owner, and cement contractor Halliburton, but a string of pretrial rulings by a federal judge undermined BP's legal strategy to pin blame on them. At the time of the explosion, the Deepwater Horizon was drilling into BP's Macondo well. The rig sank two days later. After several attempts failed, engineers finally managed to cap the well on July 15, 2010, halting the flow of oil into the Gulf of Mexico after more than 85 days. PhotoBlog: Cat Island pelicans see habitat shrinking 2 years after Gulf spill Read coverage of the spill from 2010 Archival video: The people of the Gulf Coast have survived hurricanes, but 128 days after the BP oil spill disaster, they're struggling to see a way forward. NBC's Anne Thompson reports. More content from NBCNews.com:
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11/15/2012
BP to pay $4.5 billion over Gulf oil spill
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