More than $5bn has been paid out by the BP fund established a year ago for those who lost money in last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Total pay-outs might well be lower than expected. The facility, which will be open for claims until August 2013, has only paid out a quarter of the $20bn set aside by BP. Of almost 1m claims received since the Macondo accident...359,441 claims were paid. Around 430,000 claims have been denied by the fund administered by Kenneth Feinberg, an independent lawyer, with some 25,000 deemed to be lacking sufficient proof to be processed...Claims are still coming in. In the past three months, the fund has received 61,558 new submissions for damages. Since the fund opened, Mr Feinberg has come under attack from some Gulf residents and politicians for not paying out large enough sums and being too slow with the fund’s payments. However, BP argued earlier this year that the compensation fund should be less generous with pay-outs, as the region is recovering faster than the fund assumed. In a submission to Mr Feinberg’s Gulf Coast Claims Facility, BP challenged the fund’s view that it should pay twice the value of substantiated losses, on the grounds that claimants are likely to suffer 70 per cent of their 2010 losses again in 2011 and a further 30 per cent in 2012. BP suggests the total additional compensation for future years should be just 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the certified 2010 loss because the Gulf is recovering at a faster rate than initially predicted by the fund.