Are you suggesting there should be punitive penalties above and beyond the actual cost?
When it is your blatant negligence and lies that led to an ecosystem being destroyed, after having failed for a YEAR in attempting to fix the problem for which you are mandated by law to have a solution for, then yes.
Their engineers should be jailed and stripped of their PE. Their managers and executives should be jailed and tried for international environmental crimes. That is all before we start talking about financial reparations for the harm done.
If I remember correctly, they didn't even do the necessary ecosystem studies prior, and just made shit up, including specifying that animals that have NEVER lived in the gulf, were in fact present all over the gulf. This doesn't even get to the fact that they couldn't find a solution to stop the flow of oil for A YEAR.
That's like saying it would be okay if a Nuclear Power Plant had a core leak due to their negligence, leading to radioactive materials and radiation leaking, and allowing them to not fix the problem for 1 whole year, resulting in the deaths of many. Would you put up with that shit? No. The same goes for BP
If it was purely an accident that could not have be avoided or prevented, then yes, I would be okay with them settling for 8billion due to not being able to fix the problem. The simple fact remains that it WAS avoidable and could have been prevented completely, or at the minimum, almost fully negated.