Posts tagged “BP”
New Official Rate Of Spewage
The official government estimate of the rate at which the BP oil spill is spewing oil has just been updated again, five days after the previous update. On June 10, we were told that three different groups of scientists had produced revised estimates of the rate of spewage. “One group estimated a range from 12,600 [...]
Depends On The Definition Of Simply Untrue
BP Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles last Wednesday: Recent media reports have suggested that individuals involved in the cleanup operation have been prohibited from speaking to the media, and this is simply untrue. BP fully supports and defends all individuals rights to share their personal thoughts and experiences with journalists if they so choose. BP [...]
BP Spill Flow Rate Estimates: Fact and Fiction
Here’s the AP‘s summary of yesterday’s BP oil spill flow rate developments. With each new look by scientists, the oil spill just keeps looking worse. New figures for the blown-out well at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico show the amount of oil spewing may have been up to twice as much as previously [...]
Great Moments in Spokesmanship
Here’s the question Brian Beutler of TPM asked Senate Minority Leader John Boehner: Do you agree with Tom Donohue of the Chamber that the government and taxpayers should pitch in to clean up the oil spill? Boehner’s answer: I think the people responsible in the oil spill—BP and the federal government—should take full responsibility for [...]
The Walking, Talking Absorbent Oil Boom
One of the key low-tech weapons in the oil-spill response armory is the absorbent oil boom. You throw them out on the water (in a continuous chain that, in theory at least, acts as some kind of barrier). And you let them sit there till they have soaked up as much dirty filthy stuff as [...]
BP Spill Rate: Some New (And Improved) Developments
When it comes to estimates of the BP spill rate, we have several new-and-improved developments today. Up to now, the media has been consistently touting the official government estimate as 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, even though its expert panel, the Flow Rate Technical Group, had said its upper-end estimate was 25,000 barrels a day. But [...]
Rounding, With A Vengeance
Reuters, yesterday afternoon: In London, BP shares closed down 5 percent, against a drop of 2 percent in the STOXX Europe 600 Oil and Gas index. In New York, the company’s American depositary shares fell more than 6 percent. BP shares have lost about a third of their value since the crisis erupted. Actually, it’s [...]
Page-View Prostitution?
Last week, John Byrne of Raw Story made a big deal about a stock sale by Goldman Sachs in the first quarter of 2010. The headline blares “Goldman Sachs sold $250 million of BP stock before spill“. The bold face teaser breathlessly adds: “Firm’s stock sale nearly twice as large as any other institution; Represented [...]
The Spill Rate Estimate That Walks On Water Has Feet Of Clay
On May 26, a U.S. government expert panel, the Flow Rate Technical Group, released an official government estimate of the spill rate from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, estimating that oil is gushing from it at a rate of 12,000 to 25,000 barrels a day. That estimate quickly attained “the most reliable estimate” status, and [...]
How Much Oil Would The Oil Spill Gush (If BP Could Gush Truth)?
The weekend brought us news of BP’s new “containment cap” being so wildly successful (in a so-far-so-good sense of course, everyone is careful to add immediately; lest someone accuse them of premature jocularity, in Keith Olbermann‘s immortal phrase, from back when he was a mere sportscaster on ESPN). BP released another in a long and [...]