Ass kicker Obama vs BP

[Palfrem]

Anyone getting a bit fed up over President Obama's rhetoric over BP?

It's grim scenario for sure, but perhaps he may like to contemplate the rather more serious outcome of another failed valve on a plant operated by a US company this time and compare the levels of USofA response and compensation at the time, and ever since.

BBC ON THIS DAY | 3 | 1984: Hundreds die in Bhopal chemical accident

Quoting from BBC web-site

"In another development, the Obama administration said BP had agreed to quickly meet the compensation claims of businesses and individuals whose livelihoods had been disrupted by the spill. "

It's been 26 years and proper compensation has yet to be paid by Dow (the company that bought out Union Carbide)

Until 1998 when the Union Carbide / Dow handed over the site to the Indian Governement the site was still toxic.

..sorry rant over

 

[st13phil]

The rant is worthwhile: there are huge double standards within Washington DC when it comes to American industry polluting the planet vs something notionally non-American polluting America.

There's no doubt that BP are in the midst of an environmental catastrophe, but it looks suspiciously like a "there but for the grace of God" situation as far as other oil exploration companies are concerned and in my view Obama is playing to the (partisan) gallery on this one. A cynic might say that it's just what his administration needed to deflect attention from a less-than-stellar performance in some policy areas, and a pretty grim domestic economic situation in general

 

[amg_me]

I think he throwing his weight around a bit to much on this bp issue.

 

[GordonTarling]

I really don't see what his problem is - BP have said that they'll pay full cleanup costs, so what more does he want? If it had been an American oil company rather than BP, I'm sure it'd be a different story.

 

[Piff]

Wasn't the oil rig rented? Do the owners (whoever they are) have a share in the problem?

Secondly, as large oil consumers, isn't it a little rich demanding cheap oil then moaning when things don't go to plan.

 

[BTB 500]

IIRC BP currently employ something like twice as many people in the US than they do in the UK, and are approx. 40% US owned. It was also a US company (Haliburton) that did the original seabed work on the blow-out preventer ...

IMHO the Exxon Valdez incident was far more blameworthy with major deficiencies in the ship & crew (e.g. the tanker's radar - which would have prevented the accident - had been out of order for a year and not repaired).

 

[c43 amg]

A lot of valid points raised.

 

[HowardD]

An American lawyer being interviewed on R4 today was encouraging british BP shareholders to join a class action he was taking against BP to compensate for the nosedive in share price.

The interviewer asked him if he thought there was any irony in that the class action could further damage the share price or make BP bankrupt.

He thought bankruptcy was an acceptable outcome and that all BP's board should be sacked and the weakened share price should leave the company vulnerable to a hostile takeover. He was talking about litigation for several hundred US $bn.

At one point the lawyer said that he was bringing a class action on behalf of the porpoises and turtles harmed by the oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

Noone is happy with the environmental catastrophe caused by this disaster, not to mention the 11 lives lost, but in my view Obama is behaving like a playground bully, attacking BP to hide is own presidential inadequacy and is trying to mobilise the US against another country. He is a joke.

 

[trapperjohn]

Looking and listening to the facts that are out there all the seabed rigs and blow off valves and what have you were American owned and operated. It’s the American owned seabed activity that lead to the oil leak not someone in UK. (Although the buck always stops with the boss)
BP has said they will fund the clean up and pay out on compensation claims and they are doing that right now. What more can they do when an American subbie gets it wrong. Apparently 3 more undersea rigs have faults on them from the same American subbie. Have these been corrected I hear not.
As a country there was concern in the media over the years about America falling out with us (the UK) and the special relationship was sacrosanct. If this is how the US treats one time friends perhaps now is the time to step away from this relationship and consider our options..
So Mr President – Drill down and get the facts, sh!t generally proceeds in a down hill direction so be careful, it could come home to roost.
Mr Prime Minister, - You have heavy incoming here. For Gawd’s sake Chuck a bit back lean on the American subbies and America’s failings too.
Difficult to sore with Eagles when…….you have crap subbies.
　

 

[nick mercedes]

Wasn't the oil rig rented? Do the owners (whoever they are) have a share in the problem?

Secondly, as large oil consumers, isn't it a little rich demanding cheap oil then moaning when things don't go to plan.

Xenophobic president pandering to dimwitted Americans due to forthcoming elections.

Blame the Brits, despite the rig being owned and run by an American company who skipped America to a Swiss canton to avoid American tax (notice the chubby Americans aren't whining about that), blowout preventer being the work of yet another American company and cementing (whatever that involves) being down to Haliburton...

Meanwhile our PM is too much of a lapdog to have the balls to say anything.

At least mayor Boris had a go.

 

[Mr E]

Does that mean that we can look to the US for compensation over the near-collapse of their banking and home-lending industry and the repercusions reverberating aroiund the globe since?

 

[trapperjohn]

Ah the sub prime market. Their expression their **** up.
Some how that has sort of fallen away.
Book 'em Dano

 

[nick mercedes]

Does that mean that we can look to the US for compensation over the near-collapse of their banking and home-lending industry and the repercusions reverberating aroiund the globe since?

There's about as much hope of that as of getting compo for the greif of going to war in Iraq to save the world from the WMDs that turned out not to exist.

 

[kikkthecat]

Dont you just love the way Obama says "BRITISH Petroleum" at every opportunity even though the company hasn't used that name for 12 years.

This is how it works.

An Englishman goes on holiday to Florida and hires a car. The car is built by a US car company and owned by a US hire company. Either by design fault or lack of maintenance it has a serious brake defect.
The Englishman takes the car and runs into another vehicle killing several people. The Americans need someone to blame.

BP is the equivalant of that car driver.

Haliburtons built the wellhead and Transocean owned the rig. BP were leasing it. I dont think they really understood they were renting a timebomb built from parts supplied by whoever offered them at the lowest price.
As Trapperjohn said there are more rigs out there built by Haliburtons and owned by Transocean that do not have working blow out prevention valves. I suspect whoever is operating them is backpeddalling rather quickly about now.

 

[Palfrem]

We don't hear much on the news about Transocean et al do we?

 

[grober]

The Transocean motto :- “We’re never out of our depth”. obviously the Americans don't do irony . Transocean - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And here is the company who made the Blowout Preventer-based in Houston Texas.http://www.c-a-m.com/content/DPS/DRL/index.cfm

 

[PXW]

Interesting discussion. It is common knowledge in the Gulf that the whole area is clagged up with muck from decades of oil exploration and production. BP's clean up will actually leave the area in a better state than it was before the spill. Many of us will have seen the TV interview with a Gulf fisherman gloating that whereas before he was struggling to make a couple of hundred dollars/week from fishing, he is now getting $1700/day from BP. BP have already committed to meeting the full cost of cleanup and any claims for consequential damages. Some figures (from BP's website):

3600 vessels now deployed on the clean-up and containment exercise
383,000 barrels (16.1 million gallons) of 'oily liquid' has been recovered
436 miles of containment booms are in place
510 miles of absorbent boom is in place
42,000 claims submitted
20,000+ claims already paid
173,000 calls made to the BP helpline.
$1.43bn already paid out to meet the cost of the spill so far.

Obama's contribution:

Kick ass
Demand that dividend is suspended.

The latter is utterly ridiculous. You could possibly see an argument if it was Halliburton picking up the tab, because they would struggle to raise this amount of cash. But BP will likely have immediately available credit (RCFs, swinglines etc) of $20bn+, plus their cash on hand, plus budgeted capex of over $20bn/year it can redirect if necessary (at least in part), plus a net positive balance sheet of over $100bn (i.e. assets less liabilities). They can afford this spill and clean-up. And far more comfortably than the goon in the white house can afford a poor result in the mid term elections.

 

[Palfrem]

By the way, the North Sea rig Piper Alpha (Explosion & fire in 1988 with 169 dead) was run by US firm Occidental (Who?) who were roundly panned in the subsequent Cullen Report.

Interestingly one of the findings concerned Emergency Shutdown Valves

"Proper location of emergency shutdown valves and backup valves are essential to cutting off fuel supply in case of a fire" or leak as the case may be

 

[flango]

Having an involvement in this I can tell you on a public forum that BP was the operator, Halliburton suplied the cement for the well but Transocean was the owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon rig. The reason for the spill was faiure of the BOP (Blow out Preventer) this does happen from time to time. But the main reason is the USA's greed for cheap Oil, Operating standards in the Gulf of Mexio are no where near as strict as the North Sea for instance in the North Sea after the BOP you have to have an acoustic valve to shut off the oil flow in case the BOP fails, this is not mandatory in the Gulf and Deepwater Horizon did not have an acoustic valve, yet strangely enough all other platforms operated by BP do, the reason BP work to the highest Global safety standards which are the North Sea.

I feel a little sorry for BP as I said on my other post its a bit like hiring a car driving it into a fuel depot causing a massive blaze and environmental disaster and the car hire company takes all the blame not the driver. The Operator BP does have a responsiility and maybe they should have checked the deepwater Horizon blow out preventors a little closer but it seems harsh they are shouldering all the blame. In case you have not seen how bad the orignal incident was below are a few photo's of the rig catching fire to it completely sinking.

 

[Palfrem]

Frighteningly similar to Piper Alpha