A little too soon to say for sure but the \”world\’s worst environmental disaster\” might turn out to be a few months of murky water.
A little too soon to say for sure but the \”world\’s worst environmental disaster\” might turn out to be a few months of murky water.
But note the attempt to imply that there’s a veritable Oil Nessie lurking underwater ready to emerge and shock us all. Ooooooh!!!
Now we know why they insisted on that 20 billion goverment overseen pot being set up, now if it turns out claims are much less than that, good luck BP getting any of it back.
Under the terms of the settlement, BP is supposed to get back anything left in the fund after everything has been settled. I am not hugely confident in the chivalry of the Obama Administration though.
A lot of oil spilled out before the started to suck it up from near the well. So no new oil has been spreading out on the Gulf waters. All the initial oil spread out to cover a large area, and some of it made landfall. Waves, sun, and bacteria have done a lot of clearing up this oil. There is not likely to be any more oil covering the Gulf so all the fishermen who were racking in BP’s money whilst at the same time claiming loss of living can get on with their jobs. Other businesses just need to advertise that everything is back to normal – if they can cope with the loss of face that they were claiming 99% of businesses would be going bankrupt.
If anyone says that there is still oil from the Exxon Valdez in Alaskan waters and claims the same thing happens in the Gulf then they should also note that Alaska is very cold and the waters in which the oil is still found is very still.
Well, crude oil is organic…
As for the money, take a look at the terms and scope of that fund. Obama could probably wangle his reelection campaign funding off it.
“Even the federal government admits that locating the oil has become a problem.”
Next thing they’ll be asking BP to drill for it…
It does make Tony H’s flippant ‘big ocean’ comment look prescient – just maybe he knows a teeny bit more about oil than Obama.
Won’t stop the Billy Bobs claiming compo for a few decades, even though the shrimp and fishing industry had already been decimated by cheap imports – and the Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone caused by US farms.
I’m wondering if one of the results of this maybe that all the oil co’s (& other industries) are right now looking for ways to restructure themselves so that the current situation may never re-occur. Not that there won’t be another oil spill or whatever but there won’t be a corporate entity to send the bill to.
Any ideas how?
It’s a fascinating policy that O and Congress have – let’s see if we can make the US as friendly a business location for foreigners as Russia. There’s still a distance to go, but the shake-down and robbery direction is pretty clear.
Does this surprise anybody? Even at the height of the leaks, there was only a yard-wide stripe on the beaches, at worst.
The oil usually just disappears by itself, I have no idea how it works but it just does.
BP will be lucky if they are out only the $20B. Our (USA) current regime will doubtless find a whole raft of additional charges after they have used the initial $20B as their slush fund. Recently, they extorted $100 M from Dell and a similiar amount from GE. And they had no connection to Kenya that is known.
I seem to remember a recent story that highlighted the fact that there are many many natural oil seeps in the Gulf – where oil and methane escape upward from the oil bearing layers into the water column . The total escape from the Deepwater Horizon blowout was about 2X the annual estimated natural seepage. i.e. the environment that the eco-loons portray as pristine was already coping with a substantial level of oil pollution. I guess the bugs just thought Christmas had come early….
[…] Which gives the lie to the naive free market fairystory that naughty firms just pretending to be sustainable will be swiftly abandoned by consistently conscientious consumers. Indeed (focusing more widely than consumer behaviour) you may have noted that BP’s share price recently rose. Which indicates that even being a certified planet-wrecker is no guarantee of abandonment by the forces of capitalism. (Though see Tim). […]
Yes, it is something that is often not mentioned by reports on the spill: oil is organic, and hence gets back into the system without being permanently there.