by Len Hart, The Existentialist CowboyBP is busted. Penalties already assessed BP exceed 60 $billion. The cost of the cleanup will run about $760m but that figure was 'operative' before the last failed attempt to plug up the hole. Damages increase daily, hourly as the hole remains unplugged, as the oil continues to spew!
Associated Press reports that damages have already wiped out some $75 billion in market value. By every definition, BP is bankrupt, finished! Kaput!
Firm's stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented 44 percent of total BP investmentAnd then --yet to be tallied --the costs of clean up and environmental damages to coast lines, damage that has yet to occur!.
The brokerage firm that's faced the most scrutiny from regulators in the past year over the shorting of mortgage related securities seems to have had good timing when it came to something else: the stock of British oil giant BP.
According to regulatory filings, RawStory.com has found that Goldman Sachs sold 4,680,822 shares of BP in the first quarter of 2010. Goldman's sales were the largest of any firm during that time. Goldman would have pocketed slightly more than $266 million if their holdings were sold at the average price of BP's stock during the quarter.
--Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill
...under US law, BP is liable for $1,100 in civil penalties for each spilt barrel of oil and gas, to be paid to the US federal and affected state governments. If BP is found to have acted with gross negligence – and there is no evidence so far that it has – this fine would rise to $4,300 for each barrel.I propose that the governments of the United States and Britain act quickly to seize the assets of BP, plan a fair distribution of all assets and put into place a mechanism by which damages to homes and other coastal properties are addressed without additional layers of PR flack, corporate bureaucracy and 'spin'.
The issue of legal liability for the accident is complex, involving US federal and state laws. City analysts’ calculations of the bill faced by BP have ignored the potentially ruinous cost of civil penalties.
--BP Faces Extra $60 Billion Legal Costs As US Loses Patience
On Tuesday alone, the first trading day since BP’s latest attempt at a fix failed, and the day the government announced it had opened a criminal probe into the disaster, its stock took a hit of 15 percent.The Gulf disaster has now eclipsed the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, which, after two decades of lawsuits, cost Exxon Mobil $4.5 billion. According to analyst Blake Fernandez with the Howard Weil investment firm, that comes to about $654 per gallon today.
The British oil giant is worth $75 billion less on the open market than it was when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded six weeks ago. Other companies involved in the spill — Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron — have all lost at least 30 percent in value.
And as oil seeps unchecked into the Gulf, nearby states, businesses, environmental regulators and injured workers and cleanup crews are eyeing damages that could total billions more.
--As Gulf Oil Spill Grows, Do Does BP's Liability; $75 Billion in Market Value Already Wiped Out
ON JUNE 2nd the White House announced that BP, an oil firm, would be subject to a criminal investigation over the oil spilling out of the Deepwater Horizon rig. The company's share price, along with that of Halliburton, an oil-services company that is also implicated in the Gulf of Mexico spill, fell sharply on the news. This contrasts with the price of ExxonMobil's stock in the weeks following the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 (when the company was plain Exxon). Cleaning up after Exxon Valdez ultimately cost Exxon about $4 billion, much less than had seemed likely at first, because a Supreme Court decision in 2008 allowed punitive damages to be slashed from $2.5 billion to $507.5m.Many are of the opinion that it is time to restore the 'corporate death penalty: seize BP, freeze, confiscate assets, prosecute whatever management is guilty of criminal negligence and/or or malfeasance of any type or terminology. Seizing BP effectively ends that company's existence as a corporation. Any assets remaining after damages are paid are then controllable by the public; the current management is put put out of a job if not prosecuted. Secondly --seizing BP puts an end to its control of information, better termed 'dis-information'. Corporate spin-meisters are literally trained by companies like Ammerman Enterprises of Sugar Land, TX, the Houston suburb whose other disgrace is that it was home to Tom DeLay. Ammerman Enterprises trains executives for huge firms like Exxon, Shell, DuPont et al. It was Ammerman Enterprise which 'trained' EXXON executives with respect to the Exxon Valdez. What we call 'spin' and PR, they call 'bridging' --a fancy, 'corporate' word for 'let's talk about something else' or 'I don't wanna talk about that; let's talk about this!'
--The Economist, How the share prices of BP and Exxon have fared after big oil spills
This disaster will prove to have been much worse --a catastrophe by any standard, an irrefutable repudiation of the very notion of 'corporate personhood', in fact, 'corporate privilege'. It is time to repudiate the SCOTUS decision, the effect of which is to put corporations above the law even as 'real persons' are held to a higher and often unfair standard. This disaster must be watched carefully! Will corporations get away with destroying the habitats of all living things --including ourselves? Or --will the corporations be held responsible for the irreparable damages that they have inflicted and continue to inflict upon our only habitat: planet Earth?
4 comments:
I agree completely with your proposed response Len, but realistically it's not likely to happen. The idea that the government would seize BP ignores the fact that BP has already effectively seized the governments of both the US and the UK. The more likely outcome would be that BP will be bankrupted by legal obligations (which, like the Exxon Valdez it will litigate for decades or until lobbying gets the laws changed to something even more corporate-friendly) -- then declared too big to fail. The ensuing bailout will of course infuriate 99% of Americans, but that huge majority will be portrayed in the media as a sliver of cultish special interests on the far left and ignored as usual.
Unless of course it can be proven that BP did indeed know beforehand that the catastrophe was imminent and did nothing about it beyond warning its friends -- like Goldman Sachs. That would be a game changer. With 99.99% of the public up in arms the government would be forced to take action. They'll probably send BP a VERY sternly-worded letter.
No, no, it's all going to be o.k. Obama's going to appoint a commission! And besides, the local fisherman interviewed by NPR(nat. propaganda radio) forgive BP and actually want more drilling in the gulf.So everything's cool. Oil is good for the food chain. McDonalds is coming out with the BP burger with crude sauce. Sales of Tidy Bowl are expected to soar. Capitalism rules!!
I am British, what has angered me is that you get some American bloggers attacking British people for the oil spill.
How did the ordinary man in the street have anything to to this oil spill?. Ironically BP is 40% American after is merged with an American oil company. So why to people like Obama keep saying "British Petroleum"
And as part of these contract, I am sure the US govt must have required that they must employ US workers. Companies like Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron were part and parcel of this oil rig. So why is only BP in the firing line, why not the American subcontractors not to blame?
However, what annoys me about the seize BP campaign is the sheer anti-British racism that it coming out of America.
I have no problem with BP getting a kick in the teech, but this hatred for British people has to stop.
You would think that after American taking Britain to Iraq into a useless war, that Americans would be apologitic and show some respect British nation. How many British soliers are side by side with American soldiers? How many British soldiers are getting killed for this stupid american invasion of Iraq?
This is the same country that started the banking crisis that has crippled the world. I am sure there people that want american assets to be seized and for american banks to pay for selling sub-prime loans which were graded as AAA.
As usual Americans have double standards. Demanding justice for Americans, but what about when American companies cause environmental disasters. In India in 1984, we had the Bhopal disaters in which gas leaked from an american chemical plant. Some 20,000 people died and 500,000 suffered inhalation problems. 25 years on these Indians are still waiting for compensation. And when Indians see American angry over BP, they ask why no justice for us. One survivor who lost 11 members of yer family was offered 5 cents as compensation!. Is this how American value life?!!
It is time American paid out the the victims of Bhopal!
Show that you don't have double standards!
Anonymous (British) said...
I am British, what has angered me is that you get some American bloggers attacking British people for the oil spill.
I have never attacked the British people and my attack on BP is no more vehement than my attack upon almost EVERY American corporation about whom I have often URGED a CORPORATE DEATH PENALTY.
Besides all that --when almost every corporation of any size is both international and multi-national, to call BP a 'British' corporation is absurd, possibly naive. Secondly, FIRST damage done is to the Gulf of MEXICO ---neither British nor U.S. (last time I checked!)
You would think that after American taking Britain to Iraq into a useless war, that Americans would be apologitic and show some respect British nation.
You're preaching to the choir about Iraq. I've written more about U.S. (and British) war crimes in Iraq than Tolstoy wrote about anything, including farming.
This is the same country that started the banking crisis that has crippled the world.
Ummmm ...are you telling me that there are NO HUGE BANKS in London??? C'mon! Banks are international these days and, frankly, don't give a shit which pub you hang out in or which Texas HONKY TONK I listen to Conway Twitty in. Just one percent of the U.S. population owns more than the rest of us mugs combined! THEY RULE! And they rule by way of MULTI-NATIONAL corporations which owe NO allegiance to either the people of the U.S. or the people of Great Britain.
Now --having said all that, I have some familiarity with Great Britain by way of a previous and long marriage (she is decesased now). I love England as I loved America! I say that with the understanding that 'corporations' have been the DEATH of both nations! Cheers, mate!
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