May 2010 archive

BP Hard To Pin Down On Oil Spill Claims

NPR, Morning Edition – May 24, 2010

Yuki Noguchi

BP has repeatedly said it would pay all legitimate claims resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, but such promises raise a crucial question: What exactly does “legitimate claim” mean?

[…]

BP has declined to define the term or provide examples.

BP American President Lamar McKay remained steadfastly vague during a Senate hearing this month. Despite prodding from Washington Democrat Maria Cantwell, McKay would not veer off of his message: We’re going to pay all legitimate claims.

A BP spokesman declined to discuss the company’s definition of “legitimate.” In an e-mail, the spokesman said BP hired a firm called ESIS to assess all oil spill claims. As of last week, it had received nearly 16,000 claims. The spokesman said BP has in some cases paid some claims within 48 hours of receiving supporting documentation.

What exactly does “legitimate claim” mean?   Good Question.

I’m going to hazard a few predictions here. I hope I’m wrong. If I am you can crucify me later.

Neither BP nor anyone else has any workable idea how to stop the leak. If they did it would have been stopped by now.

The leak will continue to flow into the ocean for the foreseeable future, until the reservoir pressure drops to lower than the pressure of the weight of the ocean pressing down on it. At some point perhaps the seabed will collapse into an emptying reservoir and there will be seabed earthquakes. And maybe tsunamis.

BP will not be “shoved aside”. The government will not take over the management of the disaster response. Neither BP nor any of its management will face any substantive sanctions or criminal charges for this. Nor will BP be “debarred” from government contracts by the EPA.

For a very simple and obvious reason.

The government has the largest military in the world to supply and operate, and the government has two military occupations in progress to run.

BP has been one of the biggest suppliers of fuel to the Pentagon in recent years, with much of its oil going to U.S. military operations in the Mideast. (It sold $2.2 billion in oil to the Pentagon last year, making it No. 1 among all the oil companies in sales to the military, according to the latest figures from the Defense Energy Support Center.)

The government is going to do everything they can possibly do to keep BP alive and healthy, to keep their largest supplier of fuel to the military operating profitably and supplying that fuel.

Ken Salazar spouting his “”We will keep our boot on their neck until the job gets done” line to the media is PR to keep the peasants from burning down the castle, and is probably the only way he has of avoiding being made the scapegoat and saving himself.

Sorry about the Gulf of Mexico, folks. It’s being sacrificed for the (heave) greater good.

Afternoon Edition is an Open Thread

1 Pressure mounts on BP ahead of ‘top kill’

by Stephane Jourdain, AFP

25 mins ago

The Human  moral keyboard is limited Adam One used to say:  there’s nothing you can  play on it that hasn’t been played before.  And, my dear Friends, I am  sorry to say this, but it has its lower notes.–Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood

Huh?

VENICE, La. – As Louisiana state and local officials continue to hammer BP and the federal agencies responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, repeatedly threatening to “take matters into our own hands” if the response falls short, BP said Monday morning that it was further delaying its next attempt to shut off the leak.

The oil company has been planning to attempt a procedure known as a top kill, in which heavy fluid would be pumped into the well. Doug Suttles, chief operating officer for exploration and production, said in an interview on NBC on Monday morning that the top kill would be attempted Wednesday morning. BP had previously said it hoped to execute the procedure on Tuesday. nyt

and during my morning haze (get everybody out the door) I vaguely overheard Georgie on GMA saying something… what was that again? ABC News…

Frustration along the Gulf Coast is mounting and the government has threatened to take over the cleanup process in the Gulf of Mexico if BP does not make progress soon as the oil spill enters its fifth week.

snip

Today Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and Secretary Salazar will lead a Senate delegation to check on BP’s progress.

yeah yeah whatever…

BP…

“The challenge here is … doing things in 5,000 feet of water. What looked like a fairly simple task, when you have to do those with those robotic submarines — even small things sometimes can take longer than we estimate,” Suttles said.

BP has “other options” to pursue if the top kill approach does not work. Suttles said ultimately he hopes the spill will not be “catastrophic” because “there have been oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico, there are natural seeps in the Gulf of Mexico and that environment seems to recover from those things.”

Gah… who does that remind me of?