BP Spill Victims Still Feel Economic Impact

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-23/bp-oil-spill-haunts-gulf-business-owners-almost-two-years-after-disaster.html

Louisiana oysterman Terrance M. Shelley was struggling to keep up with demand by New Orleans restaurants before BP Plc (BP/)’s Macondo well blew out in April 2010, crippling the processing plant he opened six months earlier.

“Demand was exploding” until then, said Shelley, 60, whose family has 18,000 acres of oyster reefs.

The state closed the reefs because of contamination from the Gulf of Mexico spill. Shelley’s business dried up as customers and wholesalers shunned Gulf seafood.

Shelley is among thousands of coastal residents, business people and property owners who will be affected by a trial starting Feb. 27 in New Orleans federal court to determine who must compensate spill victims. The spill spewed more than 4.1 million barrels of crude over 87 days into the Gulf, whose $3 billion fishing industry provides one-third of all seafood consumed in the U.S., the plaintiffs said in court papers.