Gulf Coast Oil Spill

[Wookie]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

Remember that BP has thousands of successful wells and properties around the globe. A take over with the intent of grabbing those properties would be an incentive for shareholders. Then you negotiate a cleanup fee with the government that will basically work out to cents on the dollar, with the threat of any cleanup money being tied up in court for decades.

Oh I know. Not underestimating the size of BP, just . . . Uncertainty is the biggest concern and people don't make moves that big with uncertainties that HUGE.

The market has essentially cut 63 billion off of BP's market cap since this started (although who knows how much is gone due to the market tanking the last few weeks anyway).

$63 Billion that's astonishing. I can't see anywhere that it's down 30% (as someone above said) in pre-market trading. That'd be another $40 billion, totalling $103 billion. Just gone... That would be the market cap of Suncor twice. Could you imagine exxon saying "hmmm, let's take a run at suncore (post petro merger) and encana maybe in a week they'll be worthless. But... Could be fun.

I think it's got a ways to go before anyone would consider taking them over. Plus there might be some foreign ownership rule much like Petro Canada had... So the British Government might have to approve it.

I don't know... Just too much going on to see it happening.

[Wookie]

Markets are closed in the UK for the Spring Bank Holiday and in the US it's Memorial Day. Didn't see BP trading on any other markets... So I don't think we'll see carnage until Tuesday.

[HOZ]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

I think Obama's statement that BP was going to pay for the entire clean up and damages was a very strong one HOZ.

I probably know more about this BP thing than I should, but BP is actually more at fault than a lot of people on here realize. They should be at least 2 weeks closer to getting this oil cleaned up than they are.

Well, Mr. Strength, isn't feeling much love from his friends.

Obama's oil spill response: Too much culpability, too much passivity


Give Them Something They Can Feel


Bystander-in-Chief

[Iowa_Flames_Fan]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Well, Mr. Strength, isn't feeling much love from his friends.

Obama's oil spill response: Too much culpability, too much passivity


Give Them Something They Can Feel


Bystander-in-Chief

The obsession with style over substance in US political culture is so dumb sometimes. This disaster could not have been prevented by better rhetoric--the fact that "how Obama sounded" is even an issue at all is just a symptom of how daffy it's become down there.

[Phaneuf3]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

The obsession with style over substance in US political culture is so dumb sometimes. This disaster could not have been prevented by better rhetoric--the fact that "how Obama sounded" is even an issue at all is just a symptom of how daffy it's become down there.

Yea... so but how is FARTBAMA going to use his hopey changey words to fix it?

[Flamesoholic]

It looks like they're trying "mud mats" now. Can anyone in the know elaborate on the chances of this working?
link to live feed:
http://www.wkrg.com/gulf_oil_spill/spill_cam/

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by Iowa_Flames_Fan

The obsession with style over substance in US political culture is so dumb sometimes. This disaster could not have been prevented by better rhetoric--the fact that "how Obama sounded" is even an issue at all is just a symptom of how daffy it's become down there.

I'm confused. The problem is that Obama has been caught short multiple times in this crisis with the most embarrassing not knowing about the discontinuation of the Top Kill. The bystander actions of his advisers, the embarrassing Great BP worker operation where they had BP workers cleaning the beach when he was there, and then shortly after he left they left, and the frustrations by the citizens in the area as Obama has not really even addressed the economic issues there outside of some nice sound bits.

When you have a president that has been tepid at best in reacting to this crisis and showing leadership throwing out lame platitudes about his daughter while stating that the buck stops here then its a failure of both style and substance and those columns have rightfully talked about them.

While this isn't as wonky as Bush's New Orleans, Obama has done a poor job of showing leadership, decisiveness or preparation in this crisis.

When a major Oil company in the spotlight over this whole crisis has blinded the President there is a problem. I would expect that Obama is going to have to start quietly gutting his advisers and he's going to try to find a fall guy to save himself.

But to me the bloom is basically off of the Obama rose, he's been badly spanked over BP.

[burn_this_city]

Not sure what he can really do. The military doesn't have the capabilities to work at that depth so they're reliant on BP to stop this thing. Deep water drilling is still very much a new frontier. There has been a lot of things that went wrong in secession to get the crisis to this point.

[Hack&Lube]

This is why we need Superheroes.

[CaptainCrunch]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

Not sure what he can really do. The military doesn't have the capabilities to work at that depth so they're reliant on BP to stop this thing. Deep water drilling is still very much a new frontier. There has been a lot of things that went wrong in secession to get the crisis to this point.

He's never gained control over what BP is doing, he's behind the curve in knowing whats happening there. He's basically gained no accountability over BP.

Even the coast guard who he has control over has floundered badly in this crisis.

Throwing a temper tantrum "Just plug the damn hole", and telling cutsey stories about his daughter really don't show that he's trying to take any kind of initiative in this whole sordid mess.

[burn_this_city]

It boils down to BP's lack of transparency. They likely felt that BP was acting in good faith and providing information as soon as it became available. They should have placed some government personnel on the drilling ship during the mud operation. Short of commandeering every other rig in the gulf to provide support he can't really do much. The majority of the blame must fall on BP, they caused to problem, and they have the tools to deal with it.

[Pinner]

Did the company man get off safely or did he go down with the ship?

He must not be around...

[Azure]

Originally Posted by burn_this_city

It boils down to BP's lack of transparency. They likely felt that BP was acting in good faith and providing information as soon as it became available. They should have placed some government personnel on the drilling ship during the mud operation. Short of commandeering every other rig in the gulf to provide support he can't really do much. The majority of the blame must fall on BP, they caused to problem, and they have the tools to deal with it.

He can avoid looking like a moron.

Which would probably go against the past two years, but still.

[Canuck-Hater]

Originally Posted by HOZ

Well, Mr. Strength, isn't feeling much love from his friends.

Obama's oil spill response: Too much culpability, too much passivity


Give Them Something They Can Feel


Bystander-in-Chief

Jon Stewart is gonna have a field day with these!

[Mr.Coffee]

There's been so many facts that have been getting skewed and so many theories and stories... it's all a little much for a lowly landman like me but anyway... a few things I've heard or read about:

1) There's a far-fetched conspiracy theory out there that a North Korean sub left Cuba en route to Venezuela, went off course and north into the Gulf the night before the rig went down. Apparently there was a U.S. led "media blackout" on some events because they don't want to end up at war with them. Sounds pretty ridiculous, I can post that article on here if anybody wants to read it.
2) Everytime you hear someone say "5,000 bbls/day coming out" or read about 5,000 bbls a day... consider that a very RESERVED daily flow estimate. Lots of reports since have pegged the oil flow rate as being MUCH much higher, upwards of 20,000 bbls/day.
3) BP was actually throwing a party on the rig prior to the explosion to celebrate- get this- a superb safety record for the Deep Water Horizon rig.... the irony there is mindboggling.

and to address all the "who's liable" crowd, there are 2 entities that will end up taking it on the chin- at first. That would be BP and Anadarko, who's quietly sitting on the sidelines. You see, this well is actually a BP 75% / Anadarko 25% working interest well, with BP as Operator. These 2 guys would have signed some type of Joint Operating Agreement, which governs all operations and is basically your contract allowing business to proceed.

When you are the "Operator" under an Agreement, you're ultimately liable. Because you're the guy hiring all the service companies to do the work. If there are any questions, the service companies look to- guess who- the Operator- for advice, because they are the supposedly the technical experts. I guess now we can firmly say that BP, even though they likely had 9 or 10 of their shiniest shoe engineers working this project, is a company that perhaps needs to take things a bit more seriously. This isn't their 1st trip down oil spill alley (read about the Alaska pipeline that- if we're being honest, STILL isn't cleaned up!!).

BP can bitch and moan all they want that it was everybody else screwing up, the bad cementing, the terrible TransOcean rig, whatever. It doesn't matter. Liability at the end of the day lands in BP's (and Anadarko at 25%) lap. Maybe when they're done getting sued they can turn around and sue everybody else, but when your Operator, there's not much you can do but bite the bullet.

For everybody saying this will crush BP, I sincerely doubt it. But I could see this being problematic for a company like Anadarko with a market cap a fraction of the size.

[Pinner]

Only in the states a blowout could become political.

[corporatejay]

Didn't halliburton provide the casing that didn't work?

[Azure]

I also hear a lot of people blaming BP for not stopping the leak.

Sure, they didn't exactly do the best job to 'prevent' the lease, but BP is a multi-billion dollar company, and the guys down there trying to plug that well have basically anything in the world at their disposal.

Its not as simple as just shutting it off.

[Mr.Coffee]

Originally Posted by Pinner

Only in the states a blowout could become political.

Pretty sure an ecological disaster of this magnitude, you know, an oil spill that has now surpassed Exxon's Valdez in terms of ugliness, would be getting political attention no matter what country you're talking about.

This is now the worst oil spill in the the country's history.

"THE White House Energy and Climate Change adviser Carol Browner described the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as "probably the biggest environmental disaster we've ever faced in this country."

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/bp-...-1225873333899

[Azure]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

Didn't halliburton provide the casing that didn't work?

Clearly that means this is the fault of George W. Bush!

Even 2 years removed from office he still can't keep his dirty hands from screwing up all kinds of things.