S. 3473: A bill to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to authorize advances from Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

111th Congress

A bill to amend the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to authorize advances from Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Sponsor: Sen. Harry Reid — D — NV

Amends the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 to exempt advances to the Coast Guard in connection with the explosion on, and sinking of, the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon from the requirement that amounts in the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund shall be available only as provided in annual appropriations. Limits such advances to a maximum of $100 million each, with the total amount for all advances subject to limits under existing law (i.e., not to exceed $1 billion for any single incident and $500 million for natural resource damage assessments and claims for any single incident, provided that, except in the case of payments of removal costs, an advance may be made only if the amount in the Fund after such advance will not be less than $30 million). Requires the Coast Guard to notify Congress of the amount advanced and the facts and circumstances necessitating the advance within seven days of the advance. Requires the budgetary effects of this Act, for the purpose of complying with the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go-Act of 2010, to be determined by reference to the latest statement titled "Budgetary Effects of PAYGO Legislation" for this Act submitted by the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, provided that such statement has been submitted prior to the vote on passage.

View the full vote history of this bill on GovTrack.us.