A Pause, to Look at BP's Motives

(Now after 24 hours of BP's blowout gusher flowing at 20% more volume than ever before–seemingly much more, and spewing what appears to be much darker oil and less gas: The cap has been announced as officially "on" but the wellhead is still leaking furiously. They keep moving/flailing the cap around, the BOP is dangerously rocking, and they have yet to rescue/draw a single drop of oil, it seems. Nobody besides a few gullibles in the MSM is buying the "success" PR line.)

As a side note: Commentators at The Oil Drum kept repeating and insisting, the last 2-3 days, that the wellhead has been rendered unsuitable for production, that there are no plans for further producing from the well, etc, etc. While perhaps technically true, it seems a bit dishonest in a larger sense to me. Any oil they are able to capture and funnel to Discoverer Enterprise, from this relatively small wound on the ocean floor that has now been surgically ripped wide open (professionally and precisely, with a giant pair of shears, mind you)...they will process and sell, to the tune of 1.4 million/day or more, depending in part on how much is now erupting out of there. It seems obvious they had incentive to make this thing worse before it gets better. The "solution" (that was never any solution to begin with) might end up paying for a part (albeit tiny fraction) of their estimated 20-60 billion liabilities tab. Remember, this is a company that *nets* 6 billion every quarter.



9:30am: Still spraying carcinogenic Corexit like mad, 5,000 feet underwater (Update: nearly 2 million gallons of it, as of Saturday, June 5):



From a relevant comment at TOD:

E L on June 4, 2010 - 10:06am

I will tell you this. What’s going on above the surface makes this underwater fix look like a kid’s video game. Some of the most brilliant, money and blood thirsty financial minds, the same piranhas that brought you CDO’s and CDS’s and synthetic CDSs and mezzanine tranches and the Gaussian cupola are circling BP like a sick guppy. They can smell multi-million $$$ bonuses. BP’s protectors are the British government and the poison pill of untold damages. And every BP suit smells the stink of his own fear right now.

As for myself, unfortunately, I cannot afford to keep doing this pro bono. Once again, there's a "donation" button on the sidebar if people are finding this site valuable and wish it to continue. Otherwise I need to get back to woodworking. My little etsy online shop is here for those who might be interested.