U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance will hold a hearing Tuesday on whether to accept a guilty plea agreement by BP that requires the company to pay $4 billion in fines and other payments to settle criminal charges – including felony manslaughter – stemming from the disastrous 2010 Gulf oil spill and the and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

In addition to the felony counts relating to the deaths of 11 workers during the explosion, the company has agreed to plead guility to the following: a misdemeanor count under the Clean Water Act, a misdemeanor count under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, and a felony count of obstruction of Congress, relating to allegations that company workers misled U.S. officials about the amount of oil being released from the well.

If Vance accepts the agreement, BP would pay fines that are “by far the highest imposed in United States history,” according to a joint motion supporting the plea filed by the Justice Department and BP. If she doesn’t, BP will be allowed to withdraw its guilty plea, which would set the stage for a separate trial on the criminal charges.

BP and other parties deemed responsible for the accident and oil and gas release also are set to defend themselves on Feb. 25 before U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in federal court in New Orleans in the first phase of a civil trial that will focus on the causes of the accident.

Vance has been provided with a pre-sentencing report and several updates by the federal probation office in advance of the hearing. The British petroleum giant and its subsidiaries have pleaded guilty to a variety of crimes in the United States stemming from other incidents during the past 20 years.

The company pleaded guilty to felony violations of the Clean Air Act and paid a $50 million fine following a 2005 explosion at its Texas City refinery that killed 15 and injured 180 others. The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration later charged that BP failed to comply with a settlement agreement involving the accident, and the company was cited for alleged safety violations during a 2009 inspection of that plant.

Another BP subsidiary entered a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in 2007 in connection with an alleged conspiracy by BP to manipulate the market to increase the price of propane gas in February 2004. BP also pleaded guilty to criminal Clean Water Act violations and was fined $20 million after it spilled 200,000 gallons of oil in the 2006 rupture of a pipeline at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

Vance has received 30 statements from victims of the accident, including at least one worker injured during the explosion and the family members of several workers who were killed. Many of those statements urged more stringent measures be levied against the company.

The plea agreement calls for $2.4 billion of the settlement money to be paid to the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation for environmental projects, half of which would be in Louisiana, and $350 million to be paid to the National Academy of Sciences for a 30-year science and technology program aimed at the effects of the BP spill and future spills, with the money for both being paid over five years.

In the joint motion defending the plea agreement filed two weeks ago, BP and the Justice Department argued that the $4 billion in criminal penalties should be placed in the context of other consequences involving BP and its employees, including:

•The indictment of two BP rig supervisors, Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine, for their role in the blowout and spill.

•The indictment of BP executive David Rainey on charges of lying to Congress on behalf of the company. As part of the agreement, BP also would plead guilty to a single count of intentionally misleading Congress through Rainey’s testimony that only 5,000 barrels of oil per day were flowing from the well before it was capped.

•The $24.2 billion in accident and spill-related expenditures that BP has already paid out through the third quarter of 2012, with the expectation that that number will eventually reach $42 billion, including the criminal fines. That expense is in part covered by $20 billion the company placed in a trust account soon after the spill.

•A separate $525 million settlement of civil claims with the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed at the same time as the plea agreement, concerning BP’s filing of three reports containing incorrect flow rate estimates during the uncontrolled release of oil and gas.

•The company’s remaining liability to be determined in the civil trial that will include civil Clean Water Act fines that could total between $5 billion and $21 billion, and potentially billions more to pay for environmental and economic projects required under the Oil Pollution Act’s Natural Resource Damage Assessment process.

BP also is subject to “collateral consequences,” the document said, including being blocked from government supply contracts, which already has occurred for some subsidiaries in the aftermath of the plea announcement.
The company has agreed to a five-year probation period that will include the hiring of two independent monitors approved by the Justice Department. One will review the company’s process safety and risk management procedures, including reviews of major accident risks from offshore drilling, and the other will review and recommend enhancements in BP’s code of conduct and its implementation and enforcement, aimed at preventing future criminal or unethical behavior.