JACKSON, Miss. -- BP is giving a Louisiana charity $100 million to hand out to oil rig workers struggling because of the federal moratorium on new deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, the company said Friday.
The Gulf Coast Restoration and Protection Foundation, an affiliate of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, doesn't expect to start processing grant applications until September.
There's no official estimate of how many people have been out of work since the Interior Department imposed the moratorium in June in response to the April 20 rig explosion that killed 11 people and set off the massive Gulf spill. Drilling has since been suspended on 33 exploratory wells.
The fund is focused on people who worked on the rigs drilling those wells, not people who provided support services, such as ferrying supplies to them, said Mukul Verma, a foundation spokesman.
"Under a stipulation by the donor, grants will be for people who worked on the rigs only," Verma said.
BP spokesman Tom Mueller said Friday that people who had jobs supporting oil drilling operations, but didn't work on a rig itself, may get grants from the fund if money is left over.
"The fund is focused first and foremost on people who work on the rigs. The attention over the next month or two is going to be on assisting those rig workers," Mueller said. "It's possible once the foundation gets through that group of affected workers that if there is money remaining in the fund, they could do a second round that might include support staff."
That's little comfort for Brett Broussard, who said he has worked as a captain on offshore supply vessels and now can't find a job. He said BP should handle the claims itself.
"They're making it right by giving it to a (expletive) charity organization where I have to beg for a grant? I'm speechless," Broussard said in a telephone interview Friday from his Breaux Bridge, La., home. "That makes absolutely no sense to me."
When asked if everyone on a rig would get money, including laundry workers, caterers or others who don't work directly in the drilling process, Verma said details are still being worked out.
"We are working to define rig workers as broadly as possible," Verma said.
Verma said people like Broussard should apply for compensation though BP's larger $20 billion claims fund, but Broussard said he was already turned down there allegedly because he is an oil field worker.
"So boat captains and deck hands be damned," Broussard said. "They make public statements that they will be fully responsible, but where is the responsibility to people like me?"
Steve Rinehart, a BP spokesman, said in a statement earlier this week that BP is not legally liable to compensate for job losses caused by the moratorium, though it did set up the $100 million fund as a goodwill gesture.
Mueller, the other BP spokesman, said Friday that every applicant for compensation in the larger $20 billion fund is considered on an individual basis.
Would someone like Broussard be turned down solely because he works in the Gulf oil industry?
"I think there's a lot of moving parts working between the different claims funds and assistance funds and it's going to take a little time for all of that to come into clear focus," Mueller said.
