British oil giant has paid about one billion U.S. dollars in settlement payments to businesses and individuals who lost money in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, a lawyer in charge of the economic and property claims process said Wednesday.

Patrick Juneau, the court-appointed claims supervisor, said in a year-end report that proposed settlements were accepted by about 95 percent of those who filed a claim, according to the news website NOLA.com.

The one billion U.S. dollars come on top of about 405 million in claims that were already in the queue when Juneau took over the Gulf Coast Claims Facility from lawyer Kenneth Feinberg last March.

BP has estimated that it will pay 7.8 billion U.S. dollars to resolve more than 100,000 damage claims stemming from the oil spill.

Louisiana had received the most money from the payments among the five Gulf Coast states that were eligible, at 494 million dollars, Florida came in second, with 208.6 million, and Alabama finished third, at 154.1 million, Juneau said.

The 2010 blowout of BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico triggered an explosion that killed 11 rig workers and unleashed the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

BP has reached an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to pay 4.5 billion U.S. dollars in fines and other payments to resolve all federal criminal charges and all claims by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) against the company stemming from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon rig explosion, the subsequent oil spill and the response. Endi

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