Posted on 02/25/2012 11:13:38 AM PST by Hojczyk
On the cusp of a trial over the catastrophic 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, phalanxes of lawyers, executives and public officials have spent the waning days in settlement talks. Holed up in small groups inside law offices, war rooms and hotel suites in New Orleans and Washington, they are trying to put a number on what BP and its partners in the doomed Macondo well project should pay to make up for the worst offshore spill in U.S. history.
It is a complex equation, and the answer is proving elusive.
The federal government, Gulf states, plaintiffs' attorneys, BP PLC, rig owner Transocean Ltd. and cementer Halliburton Energy Services Inc. have been in simultaneous and separate negotiations in New Orleans, according to a person with direct knowledge of the talks and others who had been briefed on them.
Trial is set for Monday, and by Friday, no deal had been reached, several people familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The biggest stumbling block appeared to be the sheer size and sprawling uncertainty over the unprecedented dollar amounts at stake.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
A Hole at the Bottom of the Sea: The Race to Kill the BP Oil Gusher by Joel Achenbach (Apr 5, 2011)
Oil drilling is an art....this well was trouble from day one..
I surely hope the $20B “down-payment” that BP paid and BHO apparently commandeered as a slush fund gets ripped back by the judge into the mix of any fines imposed upon BP and that any and all fine(s) properly go wherever appropriate, that is, NOT under BHO control.
HF
This was an accident....not intentional so in my opinion, I think that BP should only be accountable to clean up the entire mess. That is it....no additional monies....no fine.....certainly no criminal result. Just pay for what you did. It is like in a store where you dropped something and it shattered into many pieces, I would expect that person to pay for the broken item....accident yes, but the store should not have a loss because of your accident. Same thing in my opinion.
But the trial will still go on, it's a great showpiece. What no one apparently wants is for it to actually reach the conclusion outside of a settlement.
What I love is how the negotiations are going... BP says it's willing to pay, but accountants hired by shareholders demand that numbers be justified by actual figures. Huge awards to state governments must be justified by an actual drop off in tax revenues outside of the economic downturn, and that's proving to be difficult to calculate. The feds want an open-ended fund that they can award money out of, but the accountants want a final settlement, not 70 years of liability.
Oh, and federal prosecutors want to get as much money as possible to punish BP. They actually started by doubling established values, saying the other half was penalties, something BP never agreed to pay.
Myself, I'd love the judge to start the trial off with three days of reading what both parties agree to, and then make a summary judgment OSLTF and waiving any penalties and fines against BP after taking into account the billions they've spent and gave away already.
Suspect it is being used by O to remind people why they should hate the OIL companies and our DRILL NOW conservative view on Energy.
It should have read:
"BP faces billions in fines as spill SHOW trial nears."
No matter what facts will be presented in this trial, the purpose is to convict BP in the court of public opinion, leaving the court little option but to follow, not the evidence, but the will of the virtual mob the media creates during the trial.
The real question is not whether or not an accident did or did not happen, nor were individuals harmed, personally or financially, by the accident but whether or not there was intentional negligence and not merely absence of what only Monday morning quarterbacking is sure anyone else doing the job would have done. But answering that question is not the purpose of the trial.
The purpose of the trial is NOT merely to obtain just financial compensation.
The purpose of the trial for the civil plaintiffs is to wring as much financial compensation as the massed conviction in the court of public opinion can squeeze out of the defendants, justified by the facts or not.
The purpose of the trial for the Obama administration is first to shakedown BP on the excuse that paying vast sums to the government is the purpose of government; and second, to defame an industry and a major player in an industry that the Obama administration would strangle to death, for ideological reasons, if it only could.
The bull market in crude will pay for the 20 or so billions extorted by the 0 administration.
However, the commoners will end up paying for the games politicians play.
What a sorry state we have when our watchdogs are clearly political whores that may be on the dole themselves!
Where are those who would earn a Giuliani-like-reputation for putting the corrupt in the klink?
HF
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