Recently, NBC reporter Tom Costello interviewed Doug Suttles , who’s the BP Exploration and Production Chief Operating Officer, on the “Today” show concerning the Deepwater Horizon oil spill within the Gulf of Mexico. Specifically, he asked Suttles for his response to the rapidly circulating info that oil spill cleanup technology is woefully behind the times, making the oil spill cleanup painfully inefficient. Suttles’ response is that it takes oil spills to advance the cleanup technology. ”There have been so few big spills,” he said to Costello, “and events have not driven the technology change.”
The right cleanup technology is only made by BP with an oil spill?
The lack of foresight by BP on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill – or lack of the right kind of motivation to invest in preventative oil spill cleanup technology measures – is obvious. What also seems to be so obvious is the financial effect that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has had and will continue to have on BP and the economies of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. According to NBC New York, BP has already spent $1.6 billion on the spill response and related claims. Projections for future costs and liabilities extend into the $60 to $70 billion range, although the final figure will depend upon knowing the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill damage. BP’s loss in share price isn’t even considered in this. Their market capitalization, reports NBC New York, has fallen by $90 billion (about 50 percent) . It’s easy to imagine BP CEO Tony Hayward barking “I need money now” at the moon, but local economies need it even a lot more. The cost to local economies that were very damaged by the oil spill will even reach into the billions of dollars, experts predict.
I get to be the Gulf of Mexico walrus
It would seem that dealing with any oil spill isn’t a priority for BP. Otherwise they would have been prepared for this spill. The Associated Press reports that the 582-page regional oil spill cleanup plan for the Gulf of Mexico region and a shorter document addressing the specific Deepwater Horizon event are littered with “mistakes and erroneous assumptions.” Among these are incorrect contact info for consulted marine life specialists (one of whom died in 2005, which was four years before the larger document was filed). But not being able to contact sources is perhaps for the best, as BP is claiming that the walrus is found there. Walruses tend to live in cold-water areas like Alaska, not within the Gulf of Mexico. In what amounted to a weak defense, Doug Suttles claimed that the document specifically labeled for the Gulf of Mexico oil spill addressed “all impacted species,” rather than ones that actually inhabit the region. On BP’s part, this is illogical.
Need more oil spills to advance technology? Do the math, BP
According to Wikipedia (which is hardly a super-secret source of info), there have been 49 oil spills that are recorded worldwide given that the year 2000. 24 of these happened within the US. If that appears to be “too few oil spills,” then BP needs to go back to school for a healthy dose of perspective and basic reasoning skills. Look into the Rachel Maddow video below if you need help, BP – she points out some of the major U.S. spills that have occurred on a map.
Read a lot more on this topic here
NBC New York
nbcnewyork.com/news/breaking/BP_has_plenty_of_money_to_pay_spill_damages-96366344.html
NOLA.com
nola.com/news/gulf-oil-spill/index.ssf/2010/06/as_bp_promised_the_walruses_ar.html
Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_spills
