BP Permanently Seals Gulf Oil Well 368
rexjoec writes "BP has finally plugged the Macondo well. This announcement came yesterday after $9.5 billion (through September 17) in expenditures and five months of continuous effort."
From the LA Times: "Of the estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil that gushed from the well, 25% was burned, skimmed or piped to tanker ships. A second 25% has evaporated or dissolved, according to government estimates. Another 25%, classified by the government as 'residual oil,' consisted of light sheens on the water, thick goo on the shore and tar balls. The tar balls, though not harmful to humans, are likely to wash up on shore for some time."
Fast (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, that didn't take very long now did it?
You know what I find hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)
The "potential" for conflict can raise the cost of oil by 5-10 cents in less than a week. The "potential" for supply problsm can raise the cost of oil by as much as 50 cents over the course of a couple of months.
Millions of gallons leaking into the Gulf, however, seem to have had pretty much zero effect on gas prices. Am I wrong? Please put some numbers up showing that I am...I'd really be pissed off if I'm right about that.
Re:The last 25% (Score:3, Insightful)
Is BP paying those fishermen for the next 40 years of lost work?
Is it paying the hotels for the next 20 years of lost business?
It sure seems like dumping a few gallons of oil can get you arrested, dumping millions though is ok so long as you pretend to do something about it.
Nice and sugar coated (Score:3, Insightful)
I love how they make it sound like the oil just went away.
Hundreds of workers worked 10+ hour shifts every day on the shores cleaning up oil and dead animals for the past months. I'm not sure if that continues even now but the spill is certainly going to have lasting affects on the sea floor and gulf waters.
But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The last 25% (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not saying that the specifics of this case are right, but thats what you have to do if you sue for damages with long term repercussions.
Lets say I run into you with my car and break your hand. You would need to sue me to recover the following costs:
- Immediate medical care (ER, ambulance)
- Surgery to correct your hand
- Lost wages from the immediate time away from work
- Cost of physical therapy
(heres the important part)
- Cost of long term followup visits
- Cost of pain meds (even say, Advil) because of long term discomfornt
- Lost wages from not being able to use your hand 100% ever again
- Cost of followup visits if your hand flares up again
- Cost of treating the arthritis that is now likely to develop
You can only sue me once. You may not come back and sue me again in 15 years when it acts up after feeling fine for a decade.
Similar thing is going on here. The fishermen just plain don't know whats going to happen in the long term. The legal term is "make me whole". BP did something to harm them and the fisherman isn't made whole again unless all of his costs , short and long term, are recovered. The fisherman doesn't get to go back in 5 years and sue BP again after he finds out his fishing area is a wasteland because the fish are gone.
Re:But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:5, Insightful)
Bullshit. They are going to weasel out of this like all big companies do when something like this occurs. Google "bhopal union carbide", for a great example.
In a just world they will have to pay every inflation adjusted dime since the fishing industry was damaged to when it fully recovers. In our world they won't.
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:3, Insightful)
My point is that this is a measurable loss of oil, compared to "potential" loss. Why does "potential" loss impact things more than measurable loss?
Or is this one of those make-no-sense parts of economics I just don't get?
Potential conflict can spiral into large market fluctuations. While a not insignificant portion of it IS speculation, speculation can backfire. But the numbers we see here, while large don't even really get close to the numbers which can be influenced by regional conflict.
Think about it this way, this was one well out of how many along Louisiana's coast? Imagine there was some nut who decided to blow up a rig. Compare that to a conflict which could result in a blockade of the Mississippi river! Or a conflict in which a group seizes control of an area where a major pipeline runs.
While it may be a large amount of oil, in terms of potential for disruption, it's minor.
Re:The last 25% (Score:5, Insightful)
Is BP paying those fishermen for the next 40 years of lost work?
No, but BP is paying for those fisherman to go out and clean the oil. Also 40 years=number pulled out of your ass. The effects of the Ixtoc 1 oil spill were not that drastic and shrimp industries returned to normal in 2 years.
Is it paying the hotels for the next 20 years of lost business?
The hotels are already doing quite well this year as they are hosting all the contractors that have been brought into the region, as are all the restaurants and such with the per diem the contractors are getting paid. And again 20 years=number pulled out of your ass.
It sure seems like dumping a few gallons of oil can get you arrested, dumping millions though is ok so long as you pretend to do something about it.
Yes, dumping millions of gallons of oil is ok (if you consider 20 billion dollars to not be a penalty). That works out to about $95 a gallon, not to mention the additional $1.87/gallon in lost oil revenue.
Re:But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that a) No one can see into the future to see what those ACTUAL damages will be, and b) Many of the people suing will be greatly exaggerating their damages, if not committing outright fraud. Again, I don't envy BP the mess they will be dealing with on this--especially since every ambulance-chasing trial lawyer and his brother are going to be pouncing on this, and I doubt that judges are going to be very sympathetic to the evil oil company.
Regarding A: NevarMore made the same point, that you can't know what the actual damages will be.
Regarding B: I'm pretty sure you still have to prove your claim is reasonable.
Whether the oil company is evil is irrelevant, the judge's lack of sympathy will probably come from the fact that the company is responsible for an environmental disaster.
Re:Lies, dam lies, and statistics. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not the margin of error. It's the 25% that's still in the deeper water. That's why they mentioned three ways the oil came out of the mass of the water and it didn't add up to 100%.
That other 25% is getting into the plankton, fish, shrimp, and marine mammals. Part of it's undoubtedly in the gulf stream on its way to the coast of the UK and Ireland. Part of it will remain in the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and the western Atlantic. This last 25% will take years or decades more to break down after the press grows tired of covering it.
The reason the numbers sound so fake is that they are approximate best guesses. Nobody has actually been able to reliably measure exactly what the flow was, how much is in tar balls, and the like. The initial flow is an estimate. The tar balls are an estimate. The sheen on top of the water is an estimate. What's left in the water is an estimate. The only thing they could really measure with any precision is what they scooped up or burned off.
Re:I make a point not to buy from BP anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The last 25% (Score:3, Insightful)
It's the old if you owe the bank $10,000, it's your problem. If you owe the bank $10,000,000, it's their problem.
Re:But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why the court system is an adversarial one. The defendant and the plaintiff both get to make a case, and the judge or jury doesn't have to award the full amount being claimed if they don't think it's a fair amount.
Re:The last 25% (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The last 25% (Score:2, Insightful)
Prove that criminal laws were broken beyond a reasonable doubt and people will go to jail. Otherwise it's just political posturing.
Re:The last 25% (Score:5, Insightful)
There's fundamentally two ways to make a business responsible for its unsafe actions.
One is to impose government regulations. These are generally flawed, often tuned to avoid expense to the corporation, often require unnecessary things at extra expense, may not be enforced, and are typically something of a pain.
The other is to make corporations civilly liable for what they do. This has its own set of problems, including shell corporations that loot and discard operating corporations, and the ability of large enterprises to wage delaying actions through the legal system.
The worst of both worlds is when bad government regs are used to shield a corporation from well-deserved liability.
And 25% just put itself back in the oil field? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or is in huge underwater clouds of atomized droplets and hence out of sight and mind.
Re:The last 25% (Score:3, Insightful)
Is dumping not illegal in Florida or at the Federal level?
Where I live it sure is. The cops don't ask why you did it.
Just like in Iraq, the US simply declares victory (Score:4, Insightful)
BP+US has treated the entire disaster as simply a public relations problem. Control the media message, attack and suppress any contrary evidence, and thus define reality. At least until the guilty have escaped any consequences and the gullible are left to pay the real costs.
And my observation here is to note the similarity to U.S. petro-military operations in Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East). Both were caused by hubris and greed, and the official "solution" to what is clearly a complete and total clusterfuck is just PR "rebranding" - to simply leave and declare victory.
Without independent observation and analysis, in either the Persian Gulf or the Gulf of Mexico, who has any idea of what's really happening?
But from the similarities I'll bet this disaster will continue exactly like Iraqistan: lots of smiling photo ops of the CEO's of state, the occasional human interest story about the hardships suffered by the little people (carefully avoiding any link to those responsible), and the suffering and environmental devastation and the death will keep going on and on.
Gulf of Mexico, Persian Gulf.
Same hydrocarbons, different day.
"My fellow Americans, major combat operations in the Gulf have ended. In the battle of Macondo, the United States and our oillies have prevailed."
"Emission Accomplished"
Re:The last 25% (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The last 25% (Score:4, Insightful)
Deliberately dumping used motor oil is a crime. Having it spill out of your car onto the pavement because a gasket fails is not a crime, though you may still be required to pay clean-up costs.
Re:The last 25% (Score:2, Insightful)
Indeed that 25% was what I was wondering about. The long term effects of this on our health and the health of the gulf ecosystem will probably never fully be understood, but will likely be felt in many different ways. Unofrtunately, it will be one of those things that is explained away by skeptics because it is something where it is very difficult to measure and prove the impact.
While I don't want to downplay the misfortune of those who depend on the fishing and tourist industry, I think those losses would pale in comparison to the losses that will be experienced in our health and natural habitats. Consider if you were to try and measure these things in terms of the dollar value that it would take to restore and maintain them in a condition comparable to which they would have been in had there been no spill. Restoring a habitat to a pre-populated condition is sometimes very difficult, costly, or near impossible. If the damage is minor, a healthy ecosystem will heal itself, but if it is major then habitats will be destroyed beyond repair or may be in a vulnerable state, such that it may be destroyed by a natural disaster, which a healthy habitat would have normally recovered from.
Usually when you are talking about assigning a dollar value to measure suffering, death, and/or increased health care costs resulting from something like this, then you are talking big numbers. A human life statistically is often represented as a few million dollars. It's hard to say what the effects would be, but I wonder about how many carcinogens have been left behind in the gulf and might make their way through the food chain or get to us through other pathways:
http://www.sciencesuperschool.com/crude-oil-spills-mdash-biological-medical-chemical-dangers.html [sciencesuperschool.com]
Re:I make a point not to buy from BP anymore (Score:1, Insightful)
Your sophistry is lame. If, as you claim, local franchisees are hurt, BP franchises become less desirable, and thus BP is hurt.
But you go ahead, continue regurgitating the talking points of people who would cheerfully put your head on a stick for a nickel's worth of profits.
Re:The last 25% (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and yes.
It's more complicated than that, though. Most people are probably not affected at all. But some people are affected in tragic ways. And even though I haven't gotten sick from being exposed to toxins, I AM paying for Superfund site amelioration. Does that affect my daily life? To some extent. Here's a fun map [nih.gov] to check out superfund sites.
Well, others may have pointed it out, but it's still incorrect. There does not need to be willful harm for criminal negligence to occur. Disregarding safety can be a criminal act, even if any harm that occurs is unintentional.
Re:You know what I find hilarious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oil price goes up.
Traders panic and start hedging bets on the retail market.
The entire thing turns out to be a non-event and the price of oil starts to fall.
Traders sit on their retail product they now don't want to move at a loss.
Dropped oil price results in a drop in retail petrol some 6-10 weeks later (since this is your typical refining and transportation delay).
Traders either move product through fixed agreements, or realise they screwed up and recover costs elsewhere.
Your typical oil company is also just a pawn in the same process. If petrol can be bought cheaper from the market than from the local refinery (a not at all uncommon occurrence) then they don't buy from themselves. This is why exploration, refining, and retail sections of these companies are so incredibly segregated.
Re:I make a point not to buy from BP anymore (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey, here's an idea for the poor, unfortunate station owners and their employees who are so downtrodden by the rightful boycotting of BP-supplied stations: go work for or get your fuel supply from SOMEONE ELSE besides BP. I've seen more stations switch brands over the years than I can count, some without changes in management or even significant changes in employees.
BP is not the only oil company in existence, nor are the various stations they supply the only ones out there which need able-bodied employees. Add to that the fact that there appear to be plenty of jobs to be had elsewhere, despite the slump in the economy.
To put it bluntly, BP made so many poor decisions that it's as though they set this up to fail. This is the kind of fuckup that bring forth a punishment as damaging to BP as the spill itself is to the environment.
Re:Just like in Iraq, the US simply declares victo (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that you care what's really happening - as your reply makes it clear your mind is already made up. Unless the 'independent' analysis agrees with your existing bias, you'll just claim it to be a product of the "petro-military complex".
Re:I make a point not to buy from BP anymore (Score:3, Insightful)
Its done this way because the production of oil wells do not equal the consumption of the same companies oil refineries.
If you really want to help, stop using so much oil and invest in alternate energy. Boycotts against BP are useless as you'll only hurt the unrelated retail arm whilst the drilling and exploration arm goes on with business as usual.
Humans? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:The last 25% (Score:1, Insightful)
you are not moderated for the mistruths that you spew. you are moderated for being a massive cunt. try to imitate your wife less in the future.
i know, i know. this is too much for the puny mind of michael david kristopiet to process. and yes, I know my mum's face is puny too. so very clever.
Re:The last 25% (Score:2, Insightful)
Cite the relevant criminal statute and prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. We don't throw people into prison in this country if you can't do that.
Re:The last 25% (Score:3, Insightful)
You make it sound like BP dumped the oil deliberately in some sort of gargantuan version of replacing your engine oil and chucking the old stuff at the side of the road.
I've not (yet) even seen any mad conspiracy theory that thinks BP did this on purpose.
Re:But the lawsuits have on ly begun (Score:3, Insightful)
Just ask the natives who were harmed by the Exxon Valdez -- most of them have died without receiving what the COURT DEMANDED -- and even after Exxon got new politicians to put a cap on penalties.
The TRUTH of the Exxon Valdez disaster was that Exxon only got rights to be in pristine waters and the only harbor they could use for hundreds of miles for a song because they promised the Indians who owned those lands that they would get the most advanced radar and avoid hitting ground.
Well, they didn't put in all the radars and they left them turned off. The Oil spill had nothing to do with one drunk captain -- it had to do with cutting corners and saving money on an AGREED ON safety measure.
There is a lot of pining about "lawsuits hurting business" but it's the ONLY way to right wrongs. If it didn't cost companies to screw up -- they would cut more corners. How afraid of lawsuits are companies like BP when they have a few thousand security notices on substandard or missing equipment? The battery was dead in the sensors on the Deep Water Horizon and they didn't have a $250,000 blow-out preventer -- THIS, after drilling to the extent of human ingenuity, and having invested very little in clean-up procedures -- they used the SAME TECHNIQUES that were tried and barely worked 25 years ago. In fact, all 4 major oil companies drilling in the Gulf submitted almost exactly the same "contingency plan" that was likely xeroxed from the same ones for the North Atlantic because it spoke of "Fur Seals" and the like.
The ACTUAL damage to OTHER BUSINESSES in the Gulf Coast is predicted to be around $1.4 Trillion. BP won't be paying that because it's a LOT cheaper to spend a few million on TV commercials so the news doesn't cover the truth, and a couple million on judges and campaigns. The investment in our government returns about a 1000 to 1 in benefits.