While it might be hard to pick up from most news coverage, oil companies are not actually formed for the purpose of coating the oceans with petrospills. Nobody sits around the offices of Shell or BP and says "Bob, draw me up a memo for how we can have a new oil spill next week." Believe it or not, they try as hard as they can to avoid those.
As a matter of fact, they hate them even worse than Greenpeace does. See, whereas your typical filthy hippie looks at events in the Gulf and starts crying because they see all the poor fishies and birdies getting oil on them, your typical BP exec looks at the events in the Gulf and starts crying because he sees a giant freaking hose spraying money like a broken water main.
Plus, they'll need to pay to clean the giant money slick up.
And then they'll get sued.
That is a better incentive to not spill the stuff than any number of picket signs.
Yeah, that's just the kind of slick argument you dirty capitalists always make! (He he.)
ReplyDeleteAnd then there's the fact that they just lost a billion-dollar drilling platform....
ReplyDeleteStill waiting for the cause. or what we proles get told is the cause. Oil rigs tend not to blow up, for a lot of very good reasons. The only good reason for an oil rig to blow up is to prevent offshore drilling from happening, allowing Pixiedust to have his cake, and edith too.
ReplyDeleteI'm with og. This thing stinks to high Heaven. The lifeboats hadn't even been recovered before the eco-hippies around here were threatening beatdowns on those of us who supported drilling.
ReplyDeleteAny way to find out if any Weather Underground members live around here?
"The rig costs about $500,000 per day to contract. The full
ReplyDeletedrilling spread, with helicopters and support vessels and other services, will cost closer to $1,000,000 per day to operate in the course of
drilling for oil and gas. The rig cost about $350,000,000 to build in 2001 and would cost at least double that to replace today."
I'd say that they are less than happy about the loss. One of my friends sent that to me, works for one of the oil companies in LA.
Check your mail for photo's and the rest of the article, in PDF format.
Gmac
No, simpleminded teabaggers!
ReplyDeleteSee, there was about to be more drilling. And if there was more drilling, then there would be more oil. Then the price would go down. And the tax revenues would go up.
Yes, BigOil blew up the oil rig so less money would be spent on SCHOOLS and FOOD STAMPS and DIVERSITY OUTREACH COORDINATION.
They probably used contractors from Blackwater, hired by Halliburton.
I'm for the Clinton black bag crew. Those guys where very good.
ReplyDeleteVenezCuba...
ReplyDeletePardon me for stating the obvious, but, isn't all of what you've stated pretty obvious too? I mean, this has to be obvious to anyone and everyone with an IQ north of 80, right?
ReplyDeleteOh, wait, we are in the age of idiot. I forgot.
wv: ingrit. NO, that ingrAit.
Oil companies? Pffft, everyone knows that the oil companies are just the cover story.
ReplyDeleteWhat really happened was that Dick Cheney ordered Haliburton to pour shoddy concrete.
Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld used the Haliburton Time Machine to go back in time and sabotage the construction of the oil rig while Blackwater stood watch.
The cost/benefit equation points to folks who don't want more drilling...
ReplyDeleteJeeze, next thing you know, all you conspiracy theorists will be pointing out that the ALF ELFs never take credit for their terrorist acts, even when they happen in time for Earth Day...
ReplyDeletewv: mudso
Those who lost husbands and sons in that rig explosion also agree with Og. One of my department supers is an ex driller, he lost a relative on that rig, and he also wants to know why.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I am getting old and suspicious - but in this political climate one rig accident is enough to shut down our drilling. Something the eco-freaks have wanted for decades. Drilling was off, it was on to soothe public anger, and now it's off again.
It's going to be a cold America with no oil.
Stranger
There's a Mitchell and Webb sketch (Brit comedy duo, look 'em up, they're hilarious) where a guy berates his vegetarian friend for not providing a meat dish at a dinner party. He points out that if you want to save an animal, make it into a profitable food source. "Mummy, where are all the piggies?" [mournfully] "They're in the zoo, dear ... "
ReplyDeleteSame goes for any fuzzy thing/area the ecoweenies want to save. There's a reason less developed countries are such ecological shitholes.
Tam... Tam... Tam...
ReplyDeleteDon't you know that financial incentives don't work?
Unless we're talking about sin taxes. Gotta keep people from eating all that salt and fat you know.
People need the gentle caring yoke of the state to nudge them in the right direction.
ReplyDeleteThe cost/benefit equation points to folks who don't want more drilling...
You can use the same equation and apply it to 9/11, it clearly points to people who have been moaning about a lack of Pearl-Harbor happening to USA since, uh.. '96. Or maybe '99.
It isn't even particularily heinous ,especially if they were convinced inaction would only lead to some terrrist group using a WMD on Americans.
That way lies tinfoil hat territory..
You know a drilling technique that has a 0% risk of an oil spill at sea? On that can have even massive wellhead explosions capped and cleaned up in a metter of days if not hours?
ReplyDeleteDrilling on land.
Open ANWR, drill with the proven techniques in use next door at Prudhoe with minimal impact on the land or wildlife. Send the oil south through the existing pipeline with its good safety record and ship the oil in double-hulled tankers with full tug escorts, a proven safety measure, until they are clear of near shore obstacles.
For reasonably close offshore fields, expand the development and permitting process for diagonal drilling, keep the oil underground until it exits safely on land.
WV: matio - what they call me in Italy
"That way lies tinfoil hat territory.."
ReplyDeleteOh, I don't necessarily believe this was sabotage.
The only conspiracy is in the attention paid to it.
To relate it to another example: If one is interested in gun control, just wait six months or a year, and an incident will happen that can be hyped into an existential threat. No need to go manufacturing one.
It's easy to get the people clamoring to be led to safety if you sound the tocsin loudly enough. No need to dress people up in Polish uniforms and stage an attack on a transmitter; that shit is for amateurs...
" No need to dress people up in Polish uniforms and stage an attack on a transmitter; that shit is for amateurs..."
ReplyDeleteWe live in an imperfect universe, which is acutally a wet-dream for the utopist.
All they have to do is look for an incident that fits their narrative, and their will be an incident, and push it to the press and let slection bias work.
And why will there be an incident?
Because things aren't perfect, but their politics demand perfection.
Therefore there will always be some example of death, greed, or bad luck that they can scream against.
Was listening to Mark Levin earlier. He had a verified survivor of the rig call him up and talk for most of an hour. The guy said it happened right after they'd withdrawn the mud from the pipe in the water and replaced it with sea water, just prior to disconnecting from the cut-off valve at the bottom and moving the rig. He said a bunck of gas kicked up through the pipe.
ReplyDeleteThere are the dead drillers to think about, too. People do die for our gasoline, from time to time. Say a prayer for them when you open the throttle to have fun.
ReplyDeleteAs Og has pointed out, people have died to make our steel, too. High-energy industries can be right dangerous to the people who work in them.
Don't waste that stuff! It was somewhat paid for in other bloodier coin than money.
How many of the "Don't Drill!" crowd object to drilling in places outside the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteWithout oil, you won't get a tad chilly come winter. You'll die. Dead. Oil is the for-sure lifeblood of developed nations. Without oil? Subsistence farming. Irony: A Kentucky Derby winner pulling a plow.
There are times I'm sorta glad I'm ancient and have no grand-children...
Art
How many of the "Don't Drill!" crowd object to drilling in places outside the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteWithout oil, you won't get a tad chilly come winter. You'll die. Dead. Oil is the for-sure lifeblood of developed nations. Without oil? Subsistence farming. Irony: A Kentucky Derby winner pulling a plow.
There are times I'm sorta glad I'm ancient and have no grand-children...
Art
But...But...But...how come there are more men drillers than women - the industry stinks of career inequality!
ReplyDeleteBut...But...But...how come there are more men drillers than women - the industry stinks of career inequality!
ReplyDeleteLOL. Met some women that could do it well and I'll bet none of them would recommend it to their daughters as a career choice.
Look for more of the same as the libtards, the enabling media and the enviro-mentals exploit the moment. Tomorrow's NY Times headline:
ReplyDelete"Roaches Paralyzed After Mama Celeste Bon Appetite Salad Dressing Spill Disaster in Gulf Coast Suburban Kitchen!"
@Tam
ReplyDeleteConspiracy being the attention paid to it?
Well, it's an oil slick that can be seen pretty well from orbit, apparently. Maybe US TV is full of it, but online, it's just another story.
@drillers
You boobs. What about saving the oil? Making prices higher now, make people move to more efficient usage of oil? Oil is going to be much more expensive(hint, see how little new production is going online), thus it would make sense to save the current reserves and only drill them when they are worth more.
Außenseiter:
ReplyDeleteI doubt it's intentional, but that is what the US is doing. All that oil we have, and are not allowed to access, at some point we will go for it, eco-wackos be damned. In the meantime, we are using everyone else's oil.
The major problem we are looking at is it takes about 3 years to get a field up and running. If we loose access to middle east oil, that 3 years is going to seem like several lifetimes to us.
One problem though, is that offshore located oil may just be taken by some other country if we don't claim it by drilling. Not sure the left side politicos would have the balls to take military action against someone else that decides to drill there. Not sure what the legalities of location would be.
Thanks for supporting my industry. We try very hard not to spill a drop because yes it costs far more to clean it up then to avoid spilling it in the first place. Plus the stuff is worth a lot of money. And the paperwork is a nightmare if you do pill much.
ReplyDeleteI don't work for BP but my company makes me report any measurable amount. That means teaspoons get reported. I bet most of your cars spill more then our minimum reporting standards if you leave them sit for long in one place.
The real shame of this is the loss of a good oil field. If they are spilling 5000 barrels a day, that is a darn good well in the gulf. It would have been a decent oil field but now, with all of the money they are blowing on the clean up it will never make any money.
Think about it, they are burning 6mm$ a day on the cleanup. That is 6 times worse then my projects at $1mm per day and they have not even got into the lawsuits and the penalties.
The real question is if BP will survive and be allowed to continue to operate in the US. They were on shaky ground after the refinery deaths here in houston, but this, well this one could be the end for them in the states.
I bet we can get some nice properties at oil spill sale prices though. There might be some positive yet in this.
Pentex, man. Pentex.
ReplyDelete"Well, it's an oil slick that can be seen pretty well from orbit, apparently. Maybe US TV is full of it, but online, it's just another story."
ReplyDeleteWouldn't know, don't really watch TV.
It made up 100% of the sidebar stories at Yahoo News, and was slathered all over the top of the page at CNN.com last I checked, however.
I'll freely admit I don't know what the internet media titans of the .lu and .sk TLD's are talking about at the moment, though.
Am I the only one who remembers the seemingly yearly oil slicks and spills from tankers in the Gulf of Mexico during the 1970s and '80s? Yes, almost apples and oranges because there is a finite amount of oil in a ship, even on a supertanker, but I really don't remember those getting national attention.
ReplyDeleteLittleRed1
Actually it looks like that there is a governemt insurance fund that is on the hook for all the cleanup costs. BP is on the hook for a maximum of 75 million, the fund pays the rest.
ReplyDeleteI stand corrected. BP is on the hook for the cleanup costs, but their liability for damages caused by the spill is capped at 75 million.
ReplyDelete