Most recently, Tom Costello interviewed BP Exploration and Production Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles on the “Today” show concerning the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 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. The response was that technology can’t be made with few oil spills. ”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 methods – 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 to the $60 to $70 billion range, although the final figure will depend upon knowing the full extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill damage. This doesn’t even take into account BP’s massive loss in share price. Their market capitalization has fallen around 50 percent. It’s easy to imagine BP CEO Tony Hayward barking “I need money now”, but all the local economies need it even more. The cost to local economies damaged by the oil spill will even reach to the billions of dollars, experts predict.
I am the Gulf of Mexico walrus
Dealing with an oil spill isn’t BP’s main priority. Otherwise, they would have been prepared for Deepwater Horizon. According to the Associated Press, 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 a whole bunch of incorrect contact info for consulted marine life specialists (one of whom really died in 2005, four years before the larger document was filed). But not being able to contact sources regarding the specific needs of marine life in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico is possibly for the best, as BP is claiming the walrus is found there. Walruses don’t live in warm water like in 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,” instead of ones that actually inhabit the region. On BP’s part, this is illogical.
Need more oil spills to advance technology? BP, do the math
According to Wikipedia (which is hardly a super-secret source of data), there have been 49 oil spills that are recorded worldwide given that the year 2000. Of those, 24 occurred in the United States. If that amounts to “too few oil spills,” then BP probably needs to go back to school for a healthy dose of perspective and basic reasoning skills. Take a look at 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.
Discover more information on this topic
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
