The Call Up

"Federal prosecutors announced on Tuesday that they have filed the first criminal charges related to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, accusing a former company engineer of destroying evidence by deleting text messages documenting the amount of oil that was leaking from the stricken well."

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This is all well and good, but obstruction of justice isn’t enough. Let’s consider that Schlumberger evacuated their team off the Deepwater rig about 12 hours before it exploded. Schlumberger is sort of the gold standard in oil services, and though they didn’t say so publicly, I have it on good authority that they deemed the well to be unsafe and took their crew out of harm’s way when BP wouldn’t shut it down. So where are the charges for criminal negligence? I’m sure a subpoena would uncover some kind of documentation from Schlumberger about the stability of the well. Certainly they wanted to cover their asses, and certainly BP ignored their concerns and instead hired the slash and burn services of Halliburton. Let’s not forget that people died out there.

(Source: The New York Times)

Comment

"BP said Friday that Cameron International, one of its contractors in the oil well that burst last year in the Gulf of Mexico, had agreed to pay $250 million to settle claims related to the ensuing spill…BP had already agreed to similar settlements with Anadarko Petroleum and a unit of Mitsui Oil Exploration, MOEX, which had stakes in the well, and Weatherford International, which made a part of the well. Those settlements totaled about $5.1 billion…The company had set aside about $41 billion to cover all costs related to the oil spill, including a $20 billion compensation fund. It said Friday it had already paid out about $7.5 billion to local businesses and individuals."

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Hey remember that oil spill that spewed into the Gulf for a solid 5 months last year? Don’t worry, BP is settling up damage claims with their contractors. As for paying the damages they owe…moving a bit more slowly.

(Source: The New York Times)

Global Oil Reserves Tapped in Effort to Cut Cost at Pump

So the 60 million barrels of oil we were keeping, presumably for disasters and emergencies, is being released into the market. This means a) things are so bad we should be really fucking scared or b) things aren’t that bad but should they ever get that way, we’re totally screwed and we probably should be doing more than implementing 30-day stop-gap solutions.