One item we weren’t able to cover in today’s Green News Report, but which should be noted here, comes from today’s Washington Post…
So that means, as Think Progress notes, so far the clean up costs for BP have amounted to a little less than four days of profits for them. “At $93 million a day in profits, BP makes $350 million in about 3.8 days.”
It seems that recklessness for the fossil fuel industry remains a very safe business model for the time being.
In 1990, following the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, federal legislation was passed to make oil companies responsible for the cost of clean up from such disasters, and liable for up to (a paltry) $75 million in damages. While Congress is currently considering legislation to raise that cap from $75 million to $10 billion, there remains a question of whether or not such legislation would be retroactive to cover damages from the Gulf oil disaster or not.
If it does, as “the largest oil producer in the Gulf of Mexico,” and one of “the world’s five largest companies,” according to WaPo, BP ought to be able to handle it.
Not that they ultimately will have to.
As both WaPo and TP remind us, thanks to a recent decision by the Bush Supreme Court, the “punitive damages against Exxon for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil-tanker spill were originally set at $5 billion in 1994 but were reduced on appeal. The company agreed last year to pay less than $1 billion, including interest.”
It’s good to be king a corporate “person”.
CORRECTION: Currently proposed federal legislation would raise the cap on damages to $10 billion, not $5 billion as we originally wrote above. The article has been edited to correct that error. By the way, even at $10 billion, says Daphne Wysham at Huffington Post today, the damage to property and to the fishing and tourism industries, as well as others, could eventually far exceed even that much. As Wysham notes in concurrence with the above: “Crime pays for BP.”
I thought they were going to raise the cap to 10B or more…
anyhow – check out this Times-Picayune story of what really happened. Great coverage. Tragic and dramatic.
http://www.nola.com/news/gulf-o...ust_weeks.html
lovin’ the Green News by the way.
Thanks, Matt. You’re correct. The proposed cap is indeed $10 billion, not $5. I think I confused myself with the $5 billion figure for Exxon’s penalty (before it was lowered).
Have corrected the article above.
And thanks for the kind words about the GNR! Please spread the word!
The TP article is wonderful.
The pertinent paragraph for me is this one:
“more quickly” means CHEAPER.
This was all about saving money — making a decision based on money, rather than safety and intelligent risk assessment. As a result, people are dead, billions are lost, and the ecology of an untold size region is damaged. Good work bean counters — you did it again — you missed the “TRUE” bottom line while trying to hit the phantom bottom line.
This gusher may not quit for 3 months or more. We are talking catastrophe of epic proportions. Our response as human beings needs to be equally epic.
We should take ALL of BP’s profit. There should no longer be a BP or an Exxon or any of them. It is clear our planet cannot take any more capitalism. We should funnel ALL energy profits on the planet into clean renewable alternatives.
I may sound crazy to some now but when all the Florida beaches are ruined(west AND east coast), wildlife death tolls approach a billion, evry beach town on our east coast and even Europe is threatened….well, it may sound more plausible.
Lets start thinking outside the box. We have been brainwashed for over 100 years to believe the word socialism is synonomous with evil. Who benefits from this brainwashing? Is it really possible to morally justify a small handful of humans being absurdly wealthy while the rest of the species wallows in abject poverty, being slowly poisoned to death?
Remember that Corporations are sociopathic entities. They are designed to be that way. Anyone who hasn’t seen the documentary The Corporation – well, now’s a good time.
Brad, Since the damage from the BP spill is an ongoing event, a significant argument could be made that if Congress raised the cap to $10 billion, it could be applied to BP without being retroactive — assuming the legislation promptly passed. After all, while the initial explosion occurred before the legislation, the leak is ongoing event.
I expect the teabaggers to start screaming “Socialism!” (of the costs of cleanup) and “redistribution of wealth!” (by taking our tax dollars to clean up the mess while the BP/TransOcean/Halliburton executives and shareholders keep raking in the profits). And “the corporations are taking away our freedoms!” (to swim on beaches, enjoy wildlife, go fishing, eat seafood, and breathe air that doesn’t smell like ass.)
Is it just me, or is the effort to “capture” the leaking oil more important than stopping the leak. Can’t we just dump a buttload of huge rock and marl on it and stop it up? Isn’t it a huge amount of rock etc. that keeps it down there in the first place?
The containment on the facts are destined for failure. In the Lamestream media I have heard this buzzword: OIL LEAK. They referred to it on a local news station and the Weather Channel as an OIL LEAK—no kidding. If I heard it twice within a 24 hour period you know the rest of us have heard it at least once. GEEZ. Yeah, Contain THAT BP! Guess BP better go change the seals on that there “OIL LEAK.” How stupid do they think we are? What kind of slimy black-red scum do they think we will swallow? If I had a good line into Jon Stewart I’d send his hound dog writers after THAT buzzword!
MsKitty @#8, it’s my understanding that no, BP can’t just bury the broken wellhead under a mountain of cement, rocks, debris or anything, because the reservoir they punctured is under such high pressure that the oil & gas would find a way out anyway. Remember what happens when a Mentos mint is put into a bottle of soda!
The ‘junk shot’ idea — shooting rubber debris mixed with mud deep into the pipe — would have to be injected under high enough pressure to overcome the pressure coming out of the well, so that it won’t shoot back out again. Imagine that wouldn’t look good — if it fails, there’d be tons of old tires, golfballs, etc being shot right back out to litter the ocean floor.
BP really doesn’t have any idea of how to cap or stop the flow of oil beyond the only known solution: drilling a relief well nearby that will reduce the pressure in the reservoir. Then they will drill an intercept line that will literally intercept the broken pipe and plug it (or shear it closed, I’m not exactly sure).
But the relief well takes a minimum of three months to drill, before the intercept drill can be started. (A similar action finally capped the blowout in East Timor off the Australian coast last fall, but that was in shallower water and it still took over two months.)
So they must find SOME way to minimize the amount of oil reaching the coast, thus the big effort to contain/capture the oil gushing out at this moment, while also trying to temporarily slow or stop it until the relief well is completed and THEN they can permanently cap it.
Crazy, idn’t it?