British oil major BP has said it is 'extremely pleased' with the decision by the US appeals court to halt some payments related to claims over the giant oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico back in 2010.BP had asked the courts for compensation assessment standards to be tightened to limit compensation settlements following the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It called for a review into the payment evaluation methods, saying that it would end up paying billions of dollars unnecessarily to people and businesses who had made bogus claims.The oil company, which has already been hit with $42bn of charges for clean-up costs, fines and compensation, had originally estimated that settlements would cost it $7.8bn but had raised this figure to $9.6bn in July due to excessive fees and illegitimate claims. According to the Financial Times, recent trends in payments put the settlement total on course to exceed $15bn.Since last year, BP had questioned the methodology used by court-appointed administrator, Patrick Juneau, to calculate settlements which allowed businesses to maximise their apparent losses. The appeals court said that Juneau's method was "completely disconnected from any reasonable understanding of calculation of damages".The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans has now ordered for a preliminary injunction stopping payments to businesses which did not suffer "actual injury traceable to loss" from the incident until the matter is "fully heard and decided through the judicial process".BP said in a statement: "Today's ruling affirms what BP has been saying since the beginning: claimants should not be paid for fictitious or wholly non-existent losses. We are gratified that the systematic payment of such claims by the claims administrator must now come to an end."BC