As the cost of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill grows, many of its victims, from failing businesses to fishermen and their families, may wonder if they can be compensated for their losses. After all, the bill already is in the billions, with estimates ranging from $37 billion to $70 billion.

But BP, formerly British Petroleum, has the means to foot that bill. The world’s third-largest energy giant had net profits of more than $10 billion combined in the last quarter of 2009 and the first quarter of 2010. In fact, BP has generated over $100 billion in profits, after expenses, in the last five years.

Just last year, BP had revenues of almost $250 billion, with $16.8 billion in profits. BP also owns huge oil reserves which could be converted into cash by selling them to other energy companies. How huge? The oil it owns that’s still in the ground reportedly is worth $13.5 trillion at today’s prices.

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President Obama’s fact-finding visits to Alabama, Mississippi and Florida Monday underscore at least one thing: the BP oil spill disaster off the coast of Louisiana isn’t impacting just that state, but also the entire Gulf of Mexico region, including Texas. And that region is being devastated with battered businesses.

Obama also plans to address the nation about the crisis Tuesday night. Meanwhile, the White House is pressuring BP to set up an escrow account for paying off oil spill damage claims.

Such claims are likely to come from those who might otherwise make a living from shrimping, fishing and related businesses, from hotels, motels, restaurants and other tourism enterprises to gas stations, food retailers, food preparers, packers, truckers and others. Sadly, oil spill damages are making their survival difficult, if not impossible.

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BP CEO Tony Hayward is adding galling insult to devastating injury. Rightly facing billions of dollars in costs to clean up BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill and to compensate Americans for huge business losses to come, Hayward has pre-emptively attacked future American oil spill damage lawsuits by branding them “illegitimate.”

“This is America — come on,” the well-tailored head of London-based BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, told the Times of London. “We’re going to have lots of illegitimate claims. We all know that.”

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The oil business rakes in many billions of dollars in profits while you pay high prices at the gas pump and try to feed your family. But imagine how much more galling it will be to fishing, tourism and other business along the Gulf of Mexico coast as the economic fallout of last month’s Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill hits home.

As it stands now, British Petroleum, or BP, which was operating the doomed oil platform, has a $75 million cap on payments for non-cleanup and containment costs. In other words, if Louisiana’s $3 billion fishing industry is ruined, or if the Gulf Coast’s $100 billion tourism industry is staggered, they can stand in line to try getting a fraction of that cost from the company which seems to have caused it through negligence.

Fortunately, the Obama administration is trying to correct this problem, which was created by the 1990 Oil Pollution Act. Indeed, the administration is working with Congress to lift the $75 million cap to pay for oil spill damages, in order to help those who suffer financially in Gulf Coast states Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.

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The immediate toll from April’s explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon came in human life, with 11 tragic deaths among the oil platform’s crew. The ensuing toll includes catastrophic damages to nature and wildlife, and devastating damages to fishing , tourism and other businesses along the Gulf of Mexico coast of Louisiana, Texas and other states.

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Tragically, a fire erupted Tuesday night aboard an offshore oil rig drilling platform owned by Houston’s Transocean Ltd. and leased by BP PLC. As many as 15 oil platform workers were missing as of Wednesday morning, but were being searched for by the U.S. Coast Guard. As many as seven offshore oil rig workers were reportedly critically injured and transported to hospitals in Louisiana and Alabama.

(See remarkable first-hand images from the fire at this link.)

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