Two real, published enforcement settlements, lined up. Every figure below is public record; the head-to-head is computed at build time over those real numbers. Penalty bars share one log scale, so they read across the gutter.
The largest Clean Water Act penalty in U.S. history.
For the 2010 blowout that discharged millions of barrels of oil, BP agreed to a $5.5 billion Clean Water Act civil penalty - part of a record $20.8 billion global settlement with the United States and five Gulf states.
Source: U.S. DOJ / EPA consent decree, 2015 (entered 2016)
Defeat devices that cheated emissions tests on ~580,000 U.S. diesels.
The October 2016 partial settlement totaled about $14.7 billion, including a $2.7 billion environmental mitigation trust and $2 billion for zero-emission-vehicle investment. A separate 2017 resolution added a $1.45 billion Clean Air Act and customs civil penalty on top of criminal fines.
Source: U.S. DOJ / EPA / CARB consent decrees, 2016-2017
| Field | BP Exploration & Production | Volkswagen AG |
|---|---|---|
| Program | Clean Water Act | Clean Air Act |
| Operator | BP Exploration & Production | Volkswagen AG |
| Location | Gulf of Mexico | Nationwide (imported vehicles) |
| Year | 2015 | 2016 |
| Settlement / penalty | $5.5 billion | $14.7 billion |
| Source | U.S. DOJ / EPA consent decree, 2015 (entered 2016) | U.S. DOJ / EPA / CARB consent decrees, 2016-2017 |
⇆ Swap sides · All cases & states
These are landmark settlements, not live ECHO facility records. Day-to-day
compliance metrics - quarters in noncompliance, formal-action counts, last inspection -
are not part of a settlement figure; they join per facility from the ECHO Exporter
(loadFacilities() in src/lib/source.ts). See the
Methodology for what is real versus illustrative on this site.