Blame game

[keegs]

There's an interview in tomorrow's NY Times Magazine with an ex-Navy submariner who suggests exploding the well head is possible and that such an approach has been executed a number of times by the Russians. He also suggests a BP conflict between blowing up the well and its ability to recover the oil in future. Not sure I understand why that would be the case.

It seems noteworthy that all the negative talk about the current government's handling of the spill has persisted throughout this thread and for some time now. Maybe bird's shears have a point of view???

 

[dave1949]

Do you run snows in the winter? It is amazing what a decent set of snow tires will do for a car's ability to handle slush and snow.

Aaron Z

Well, that was a joke on me. I bought a set of mounted Blizzak snows from tirerack.com last Fall. That pretty much guaranteed hardly any snow would fall last Winter. I've got them, and I am sure they help, I just haven't had a chance to put them to a real test yet.

It wasn't bad on undisturbed snow even without snow tires. But on slushed up heavy stuff, the front end just goes sideways whichever way the road slopes better than forward. I need a Winter front-end ballast box
Dave.

 

[niemeyjt]

It would be a British problem if the oil were all over a British shore. Once BP runs out of cash we are on our own. I dunno if they will go bankrupt, they probably have a pretty good revenue stream. I have not really looked over the situation, I would imagine they carry some type of insurance for this?

Most likely they will stop paying at some point and it will be in the courts forever. Then they will have to pay some lump sum which will likely be a fraction of the true cost of the mess and its impacts.

I was listening on BBC Radio to a US commentator this morning (who also discussed the wider issues of international realtionships including a certain soccer game).

He pointed out that British Petroleum merged with the AMerican Oil COmpany twelve years ago in a 60:40 ratio to form BP. British Petroleum has not existed since then as such.

His view was that much of the rhetoric was down to US domestic politics and being able to blame someone else - with mid term elections on the horizon - although I think there was also an element of 50 year old politics of someone's Kenyan grandfather fighting British colonial rule being replayed.

However, in UK press this morning, apparently (I am never sure how the press know for sure) that "President Obama said to the Prime Minister that his unequivocal view was that BP was a multinational global company and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity."

However, to pick up on the issues of who might suffer - here in UK apparently 12% of pension fund income comes from BP share dividends. I guess that US funds may also derive an income from BP share dividends. Therefore, if these divident payments dry up as money is diverted, then pensioners across both our countries are likely to see a reduction in income - a much wider impact than just around the Gulf.

J

 

[keegs]

I was listening on BBC Radio to a US commentator this morning (who also discussed the wider issues of international realtionships including a certain soccer game).

He pointed out that British Petroleum merged with the AMerican Oil COmpany twelve years ago in a 60:40 ratio to form BP. British Petroleum has not existed since then as such.

His view was that much of the rhetoric was down to US domestic politics and being able to blame someone else - with mid term elections on the horizon - although I think there was also an element of 50 year old politics of someone's Kenyan grandfather fighting British colonial rule being replayed.

However, in UK press this morning, apparently (I am never sure how the press know for sure) that "President Obama said to the Prime Minister that his unequivocal view was that BP was a multinational global company and that frustrations about the oil spill had nothing to do with national identity."

However, to pick up on the issues of who might suffer - here in UK apparently 12% of pension fund income comes from BP share dividends. I guess that US funds may also derive an income from BP share dividends. Therefore, if these divident payments dry up as money is diverted, then pensioners across both our countries are likely to see a reduction in income - a much wider impact than just around the Gulf.

J

When the banks here in the US and in the UK sent the global economy into the toilet two years ago, public and private pension investments suffered miserably. And in the case of public pensions, and perhaps to a lesser extent private pensions, the American taxpayer is still picking up the tab.

Over time I'm sure that we'll get to the bottom of the events that took place leading up to the explosion onboard the Deepwater Horizon, killing eleven crew members and creating the worst environmental disaster in US history.

From the perspective of someone from the UK who's relying on BP for some part of their retirement income, having the American taxpayer assure the checks keep coming would be nice but I don't think they should count on it.

They can be assured of this however, presidential elections in America aren't until 2012.

 

[tulenutn2o]

I'm beginning to think 4 years without a president would be good.......

 

[2manyrocks]

Some of the southern states still have constitutions that limit the time the state legislature can meet each year. Whether it was intended to limit the damage they can do each year or limit the amount of time the legislators would have to take off from their private business to attend to their legislative duties, I can't say.

I could be mistaken, but I think I remember reading that the controversy from the Exxon Valdez oil spill was only resolved a few years ago. There's probably going to be decades of litigation over the BP spill.