Green activists fear an accident involving an oil rig or pipeline could ruin the sea.
Those fears were heightened recently by the Kulluk accident - a Shell oil rig that ran aground in Alaska.
Chevron was slammed in the press for the accident, though the oil sheen was cleaned off the surface of the Atlantic in less than two weeks and no oil washed up on the famed Rio de Janeiro beaches.
FORBES: Transocean Faces Possible Lawsuit After Brazil Oil Spill
The Deepwater Horizon accident, in which an oil rig exploded killing 11 people, caused one of the worst oil spills in history.
In 1988, the world's worst offshore accident occurred when the Piper Alpha oil platform exploded in the British sector of the North Sea, killing 167 people.
But the accident will exacerbate existing problems for the oil giant, giving its unions new negotiation leverage and further soiling the company's poor safety record, which already included several oil spills.
Some count as many as 80 accident-related deaths since 1998, and oil spills have stained Brazilian beaches.
Then after the accident the confusion of responsibility between BP, the oil rig operator, and federal and local government slowed down the response and created disjointed and unclear communications.
The civil lawsuit was brought against the UK oil firm - as well as other companies involved in the accident, including rig-owner Transocean and cement-provider Halliburton - by the US Justice of Department and the US states affected by the oil slick.
BBC: BP: Scope of oil disaster internal probe 'had limitations'
U.S. prosecutors are preparing what would be the first criminal charges against BP employees stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident, which killed 11 workers and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.
Ibama estimated that 2, 300 barrels of oil oozed out of the sea bed because of the Nov. 9 drilling accident.
FORBES: Transocean Faces Possible Lawsuit After Brazil Oil Spill
Still, it would be foolish to ignore the possibility that the repercussions of the present crisis will be made much more far-reaching if it precipitates the sort of panic that took hold after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear facility in 1979 or the oil leak off Santa Barbara a decade earlier.
Shipments of oil from the north to the industrial belt in the south have been disrupted since the accident.
He added that there were other significant claims still to be settled, including offshore oil and gas industry damages as a result of the moratorium on deepwater drilling put in place after the accident, casino losses, fisheries, financial institutions and real estate developers.
BBC: BP gets record US criminal fine over Deepwater disaster
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