Bay area businesses say Oil Money not Flowing

It's been one year since BP's Deepwater Horizon Platform exploded, killing 11 people and sending more than 200 million gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

The oil from that well is no longer gushing into the Gulf but some Bay Area businesses say, money from the 20 billion dollar BP compensation fund, is not flowing either.

Locals who make their money off the water say they're still struggling.

Captain Mark Hubbard with Hubbard Marina says his deep sea fishing charter business is starting to pick up again, but not enough to cover the losses from the oil spill. He says he filled out a claim with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility and sent in tax records to support the documentation, but hasn't heard back. 

The Hubbard Family is famous for deep sea fishing charters and the Friendly Fisherman Restaurant on Johns Pass. Hubbard history on the water dates back decades to the 1920's.

Patty Hubbard runs the Friendly Fisherman Restaurant and says she works but hasn't received a paycheck since June of last year. The family businesses took a double hit from the spill. Hubbard says tourists turned away from Florida and because portions of the Gulf were closed to fisherman, their seafood restaurant suffered.

Eighty percent of Hubbard's customers are tourists. When she followed the GCCF method to calculate spill related losses, she compared tax returns and realized it cost her about $250,000 worth of business.

She did receive an emergency advance payment of $20,000 but says, that is nowhere near the documented $250,000 she submitted online for a quarterly interim claim. She says after sending in 1200 papers of tax information to support her claim, she still can't get a straight answer from GCCF workers.

She also told us she does not know any Bay Area business owners who have received an interim claim payment.We took a closer look at the numbers in Florida and found out of 173,969 claimants, the majority that filed for an emergency advance payment, 148,861, received it.

However, 104,716 also filed for a much larger, interim or final claim. Roughly half, 51,008, have been paid at this point.

BP External Relations GM, Keith Rupp maintains that the process is fair and he's hopeful all the changes will result in a speedy and fair processing of all the claims.

Patty Hubbard says despite all full paid ads in the newspaper and encouraging words from BP, there's a tremendous amount of hope that this process is going to be fair and relatively quick, and it has been neither.

GCCF administrator, Ken Feinberg says they've paid out almost 4 billion dollars of the 20 billion dollar fund with most of the money going to Florida. The clock is ticking in favor of timely payout because any money left after 2013, is supposed to go back to BP.