Maybe everyone outside of BP thinks that their oil prices are too generous for the oil industry. When you’re at the center of the worst environmental disaster in modern US history, you don’t get the luxury of deciding what is too generous. Who do they think they are? Wall Street?

The oil giant is arguing that if anything, Mr. Feinberg’s proposed settlements are too generous. The planned payments far exceed the extent of likely future damages because they overstate the potential for future losses, the company insists in a strongly worded, 25-page document that was posted on the fund’s Web site Thursday morning.

Basing its estimates on much of the same data Mr. Feinberg used, the company concluded that there was “no credible support for adopting an artificially high future loss factor based purely on the inherent degree of uncertainty in predicting the future and on the mere possibility that future harm might occur.”

Mr. Feinberg released the rules that will govern final settlements this month. In general, the program announced, damages paid out by the fund would be double the 2010 losses for most of those filing claims, less any money previously paid by the fund.