nevermind
Heh, well, I understand that one blowout of this nature is one too many, but I hope I’m somehow getting across the point that blowouts are very infrequent events relative to the amount of drilling that goes on, even though the conditions that could lead to them are not necessarily infrequent.
Well, we drive cars, so I guess we can’t complain too much.
Where does a company like BP buy insurance for something like this? How would it be possible to evaluate the financial consequences? How could anyone calculate the potential damages of a galactic cluster fuck like this, much less figure out what a reasonable premium might be for such insurance?
My dim understanding is that we, us, the people, we agreed in our generosity to offer limited liability so as to encourage offshore drilling. Which means, finally, the real insurers is we, us, the people. Now, if this is not so, I am ready to hear it. Be pleased to hear it. Am not expecting to hear it.
If we seize British Petroleum for non-payment, do we have to declare war on England? That could get awkward.
Well, at least seize BP.
Not sure it comes into play, really, since BP execs have gone on record that they will pay all response costs, including damage claims (and appear to have the government leaning on them pretty heavily to make good). I imagine most of that is self-insured, but don’t know enough about that aspect of the business to say anything useful. I can say that operators pretty routinely require the smaller service contractors to carry $10 million excess liability, but that’s clearly for personnel injuries and equipment damage on a far smaller scale than what we’re talking about here.
Yeah, but after that, threaten them with execution. Turn 'em into a bunch of Dostoyevskys.
BP will never come back from this.
Hey BP, here’s some rock n roll for ya
Here’s some more rock n roll for ya
Hey BP!
What’s your market value today?
Better sell right away!
BP self insures. Most of the non-major (independents) oil and natural gas companies insure through Lloyd’s of London.
What, they have a tidy little sum set aside if they should accidentally destroy the southern coast of the US?
PO’ed? Not really; unless you can demonstrate it was intentional. I imagine you’ve benefited more from oil in your lifetime than you’ve suffered.
Well, as of 12/31/09, they had about $8.3 billion in cash. They also had availability to borrow on their existing credit facilities of $4.9 billion. Further, they were probably going to pay out a dividend of about $2.6 billion on their first quarter earnings. They may not do that now resulting in having that cash available as well. They could also certainly borrow significantly more money or sell assets if they had to. I think it’s safe to say that BP does have the liquidity to deal with this problem for a long time.
Of course, it does significantly impact them. They’ve lost a little less than $40 billion in market capitalization since the spill.
All things considered, we ought to be very glad that it was BP that caused this spill and not some company like McMoRan who drills some reasonably similar type wells but would have absolutely no way of handling a problem like this.
After careful consideration, I’m blaming Halliburton. This is the second major disaster to come out of a well they concreted.
It’s cement not concrete. Also, while poor cementing jobs do have a history of being a cause for blowouts, I think it is way to early to place blame on Halliburton, not to mention the other parties Transocean and Cameron. Blame at this point should rest solely with BP until it is proven that someone else is at fault. Even then, BP should retain the majority of the responsibility as they were the operator of record.
According to this video, Nalco’s dispersant has been approved for wide scale use and production is being ramped up after it has been tested at the well-head and is being used on the surface. It is supposed to break down the oil to a small enough size that (natural?) bacteria can eat it.
Any thoughts from those in the field, on how well these things actually work and what other clean-up or damage control measures are being implemented already?
Er, forgot link: Wall Street Pit - Stock Market, Technology, Science
And financial dereg because they are self correcting according to Greenspan .