The Deepwater Horizon spill has done much more damage to the Gulf of Mexico than BP PLC (NYSE: BP) claims, according to the Deepwater Horizon Trustee Council. Maybe the huge oil company wants to dodge more financial liability. Maybe it wants to clean up its image. No matter what the reason, BP may be headed toward another public relations disaster.

The Trustee Council released a note:

In a news statement released today, BP claims that the “…Gulf environment (is) returning to pre-spill conditions” although the Deepwater Horizon oil spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees (NRDA Trustees) are still assessing the injury resulting from the largest offshore oil spill in our nation’s history. It is inappropriate as well as premature for BP to reach conclusions about impacts from the spill before the completion of the assessment.

Citing scientific studies conducted by experts from around the Gulf, as well as this council, BP misinterprets and misapplies data while ignoring published literature that doesn’t support its claims and attempts to obscure our role as caretakers of the critical resources damaged by the spill.

BP is misleading the public and federal authorities, in other words.

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The Trustees goes on to say:

Our obligation under the Oil Pollution Act is to restore the public’s natural resources injured by the Deepwater Horizon spill to the condition they would have been in but for the spill and to compensate the public for the services of those natural resources that were injured or lost. In addition to assessing the damage, we are undertaking early restoration and developing a long-term restoration plan with public involvement to meet that responsibility.

The assessment is a thorough and time consuming process by which we evaluate the best scientific evidence available to ensure we understand the injuries caused by the spill, as well as the most appropriate means to restore those injuries and to compensate for the lost use of the Gulf’s resources while they are injured. The restoration planning effort involves a great deal of public outreach to ensure we consider the public’s perspective when making restoration decisions.

BP has slanted results in its favor without adequate research, in other words. The NRDA Trustees have made several assessments recently that say the cleanup will cost several hundreds of millions of dollars more in the years ahead.

The BP analysis that triggered the government reaction:

In the five years since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, scientific data and studies are showing that the Gulf environment is returning to its baseline condition, according to a new report BP released. The Gulf of Mexico Environmental Recovery and Restoration report also indicates that impacts from the spill largely occurred in the spring and summer of 2010.

The report is based on scientific studies that government agencies, academic institutions, BP and others conducted as part of the spill response, the ongoing Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) process or through independent research. While individual studies are helpful, they tell only part of the story. This report, a wide-ranging compilation of reputable studies by respected researchers, provides a broader overview of the state of the Gulf environment.

The Deepwater Horizon incident cost BP and Transocean huge sums in cleanup fees and fines. Each was hit by fines for violations of the U.S. Clean Water Act. The spill damaged BP’s balance sheet, and there was even some speculation that it would go bankrupt. BP’s reputation among the world’s largest companies plunged. No wonder it tried to get acceptance of its own evaluation.

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