Posted on 07/16/2010 9:40:44 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
After busy making several outrageous comments regarding BP (BP: 37.48 -1.44 -3.70%) and the Gulf oil spill as recent as last evening, Matt Simmons abruptly announced today that he would retire from the board of Simmons & Co.–the company he founded in 1974–effective June 30.
Meanwhile, Simmons & Co. also issued a statement in an apparent attempt to distance itself from its founder. As Houston Business Journal reports:
“..on June 14, [Simmons & Co] issued a statement dated May 12 in which [CEO Mike Frazier] distanced himself from the founder, saying that the former chairman’s views were not those of Simmons & Co. Frazier referred to Simmons’ comments related to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the implications for the industry and the individual companies.”
You might recall in a Bloomberg interview on May 28, Matt Simmons endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable solution for the oil spill. later on, BP shares slid to a 14-year low, around the same time Fortune magazine (on June 9) quoted Simmons as saying BP had a month before it would file for bankruptcy. As recent as last evening in a CNBC interview (at around 6-minute mark) Simmons also intimated that the Gulf oil leak was at 120,000 bpd, instead of the official estimate of 60,000 bpd.
Being a devil’s advocate, my suspicion only grew each day when Simmons seemed to have become increasingly “passionate” about preaching the worst possible outcome and solution (a nuke bomb? come on!) to this unprecedented disaster.
Well, say it isn’t so, but according to Barron’s,
“Simmons has a 4,000-share short sale on BP that he picked up when the stock hit $37. That’s in addition to a prior 4,000-share short sale he made at $48 a couple weeks prior. “It’s going to zero,” he says of BP stock. Mind you, Simmons has an interest and a deep investment in moving beyond fossil fuels.”
The Barron’s article went on to note that Simmon’s Ocean Energy Institute, a renewable energy think-tank and venture capital fund he started in 2007, is involved in a project to develop off-shore wind power facilities and other alternative energies.
If Barron’s assertion is true, it would appear that Simmons, an energy industry veteran and expert, could have had a serious conflict of interest when he went onto so many TV and magazine interviews talking his book about BP and the Gulf oil spill.
From that perspective, his remarks would seem irresponsible and only added to the existing despair and chaos, which is nothing the nation, particularly the Gulf Coast residents, need right now.
One has to wonder if this potentially unethical and maybe illegal act could have been easily deterred if only the media would require a disclosure before putting Simmons on TV and quoting him?
Received: 20 December 2006 Accepted: 8 May 2007
Keywords hydrocarbon accumulation - vertical migration - petroleum population - nitrogen compound - fault - Tarim Basin
TruNews Interview of Matt Simmons-BP Oil Crisis June 2010 Pt. 2 of 6
A very revealing, informative and provocative interview conducted by Rick Wiles of TruNews.com on 28 June 2010 of Matthew Simmons, renowned Houston oil investor and founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International. He is the author of the best seller, Twilight In The Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. In this interview, Mr. Simmons sheds light on the lies, mismanagement, and potential dangers such as methane gas related to the BP gulf oil disaster. He states that the real blowout is 10 miles from where BP is stating and showing on CNN and other news organizations and is gushing over 120,000 barrels of oil per day from an open hole in the seafloor, along with methane gas. He further states that 40% of the Gulf of Mexico is covered by oil at a depth of 4500 feet below the surface due to the open hole blowout and that we are only seeing less than 1% on the surface.
Breaking - Matt Simmons - In Obscurity! - Lie By Omission?
Reinterates what Simmons is saying.,
Matt Simmons Believes Oil Covers 40% Of Gulf Beneath The Surface
Zero Hedge
June 16, 2010
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Matt Simmons was on Bloomberg earlier, adding some additional perspective to his original appearance on the station, in which he initially endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable way to resolve the oil spill. Simmons refutes even the latest oil spill estimate of 45,000-60,000 barrels per day, and in quoting research by the Thomas Jefferson research vessel which was compiled late on Sunday, quantifies the leak at 120,000 bpd. What is scarier is that according to the Jefferson the oil lake underneath the surface of the water could be covering up to 40% of the entire Gulf of Mexico. Simmons also says that as the leak has no casing, a relief well will not work, and the only possible resolution is, as he said previously, to use a small nuclear explosion to convert the rock to glass. Simmons concludes that as punishment for BP's arrogance and stupidity the government "will take all their cash." Now if only our own administration could tell us the truth about what is really happening in the gulf...
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