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roachboy · 06-03-2010, 07:10 AM

interesting...i'm running late this morning but saw this in the guardian:

Quote:

Gulf oil spill: BP lacked the right tools to deal with crisis, chief executive admits

• New techniques needed to deal with crises - chief executive
• Paying dividend would be 'unfathomable' - US senators

* Graeme Wearden
* guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 June 2010 10.49 BST

Oil cleanup workers hired by BP walk along the beach in Dauphin Island Oil cleanup workers hired by BP walk along the beach in Dauphin Island. Senators have demanded that BP suspends its dividend. Photograph: Dave Martin/AP

BP's under-fire chief executive Tony Hayward has admitted that the company was not adequately prepared to fight the Deepwater Horizon oil leak, as pressure mounted on the company not to pay its annual dividend to shareholders.

Hayward told the Financial Times it was "entirely fair" to criticise BP for not being better equipped to fight a leak 5,000 feet below the surface. He said the oil giant needed to develop new techniques for such crises, rather than using decades-old methods.

"What is undoubtedly true is that we did not have the tools you would want in your toolkit," said Hayward in an interview with the FT.

His comments came as US politicians demanded that BP should suspend dividend payments to shareholders while it battles the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In an open letter to Hayward – who recently told the Guardian his job was on the line – Democratic senators Charles Schumer and Ron Wyden said it would be wrong for BP to pay investors a dividend until it knows the full cost of the disaster.

"We find it unfathomable that BP would pay out a dividend to shareholders before the total cost of BP's oil spill clean-up is estimated," they wrote.

The letter was written hours after it emerged that Hayward was telling BP's major shareholders that it planned to maintain dividend payments despite the ongoing environmental catastrophe off the coast of Louisiana.

"While we understand the need to reassure shareholders that the disaster in the Gulf will not substantially impact BP's long term financial health, we are concerned that such action to move money off of the company's books and into investors pockets will make it much more difficult to repay the US government and American communities that are working around the clock to stem the damage caused by this devastating oil spill," explained Schumer and Wyden.

The two senators had previously lobbied Transocean, owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded on 20 April, against paying dividends to its own shareholders.

Shares in BP rose by over 4% this morning to 448p, indicating that traders remain confident that the the annual dividend will be paid.

Clean-up costs uncertain

BP is part way through its latest attempt to cut the amount of oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, by cutting the pipe that rises from the sea bed and placing a cap on top. This procedure hit problems yesterday when a robot-operated saw temporarily stuck, and even if it succeeds it will not capture all the oil.

The company told the stock market this morning that it will pay the $360m (£244m) cost of building six sand barriers to protect Louisiana's delicate marshes. This will push BP's total bill to date to around $1.4bn, including the cost of trying to stop the leak, mopping up oil that reaches the shoreline and compensating those affected by the disaster. The final cost is unclear, though, with President Obama insisting the company was responsible for the Deepwater Horizon leak and will be made to pay for it.

Although some City analysts believe BP can cover these costs, others calculate that the company may be forced to sell some assets – especially if it plans to maintain its dividend.

Douglas Ober, chief executive officer at Petroleum & Resources, suggested that BP's 26% stake in the Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska might have to be sold. Mining giant BHP Billiton has also named as a potential bidder for BP's interests in the Gulf of Mexico.

Other experts believe BP, whose market capitalisation has fallen to around £82bn, could be a takeover target.

BP has received thousands of suggestions on how it could fight the leak, from industry experts and concerned members of the public. One, filmmaker James Cameron, was disappointed that his offer of help was not better received. Cameron has significant experience of underwater filming using remote-operated submarines, having directed Titanic. Cameron attended a meeting with scientists and government officials yesterday to brainstorm ways of reducing the damage cauuse by the massive oil spill, and also revealed last night that BP had turned down his offer of help.

"Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing," Cameron told the All Things Digital technology conference in California, according to Reuters, who added it was not explicitely clear who "those morons" referred to.

Public anger against BP is growing in America as the crisis enters its seventh week. BP garage signs have been smeared with mud, and a Boycott BP campaign appears to be gathering pace.

Gulf oil spill: BP lacked the right tools to deal with crisis, chief executive admits | Business | guardian.co.uk

that bp lacked the technologies necessary to deal with this seems one of the more obvious statements in the history of statements, but still it's i suppose heartening to see such transparency from a corporation which has been transparency challenged these past weeks.

oil drum post about what's happening at the bottom of the ocean:

The Oil Drum | BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - The New Plan: Shears, Working on the Riser, and Wed. Open Thread 3

---------- Post added at 03:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:14 PM ----------

so two weeks later in the washington post the same information as was contained in the mother jones story about bp controlling media access to the coast of louisiana. because "it's bp's oil"

Quote:

As the oil spill spreads, BP battles to contain the media

By Dan Zak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 3, 2010; 8:34 AM

NEW ORLEANS -- At first, it seemed like a British company might be trying to keep an American journalist off an American beach. Ted Jackson, a staff photographer for the Times-Picayune, drove two hours to Port Fourchon, La., to shoot photos of tar balls on public property but was stopped 100 yards from the surf by harbor police. After 30 minutes of phone calls to higher authorities, Jackson said, the police allowed him 15 minutes of obstructed photographing, out of view of workers who were taking samples from the beach.

Last week Jackson was also unable to book a flight over Grand Isle from a charter plane company in Belle Chasse, La., because the owner could not obtain permission from BP's command center to enter restricted airspace. BP, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Coast Guard were refusing access to planes carrying media, according to Southern Seaplane's secretary-treasurer, Rhonda Panepinto, who fired off a three-page letter to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) on May 25.

"We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press," she wrote. "We are all at the mercy of BP, a British-owned company."

Then, on Tuesday, things got better. The FAA sent two special operations managers to the Gulf Coast to oversee flight access, according to Panepinto, whose company flew Jackson around Chandeleur and Ship islands Wednesday and is fielding requests from other media outlets, with no grief from authorities.

"It's almost like there's a new sheriff in town," Jackson said.

Perhaps the gulf operation is smoothing itself out after a month and a half of oil gush and media crush. Authorities had weathered criticism for a series of minor run-ins that gave the impression that BP was calling the shots.

Last week a Mother Jones reporter was told she couldn't see Elmer's Island without being accompanied by a BP representative, because it's "BP's oil." Two weeks ago Coast Guard officials cited "BP's rules" when demanding that a CBS News crew leave a beach area. (Representatives from CNN, ABC and local CBS affiliate WWL-TV in New Orleans said last week that their journalists had not encountered significant obstacles while covering the oil story.)

"Neither BP nor the U.S. Coast Guard, who are responding to the spill, have any rules in place that would prohibit media access to impacted areas and we were disappointed to hear of this incident," said Rob Wyman, a lieutenant commander for the Coast Guard, in a statement responding to the CBS episode. "In fact, media has been actively embedded and allowed to cover response efforts since this response began, with more than 400 embeds aboard boats and aircraft to date."

The FAA responded to initial criticism over air traffic restriction by citing security concerns and asserting that BP employees and contractors were not involved in those decisions.

Hundreds of media outlets are demanding access to a highly mutable, complex situation, and local, state and federal officials say they are working together -- under the majestic heading of Deepwater Horizon Unified Command -- to streamline the response to both reporters and the public.

"With regards to media, we follow an incident command system, a tried-and-true way of responding to crises," said a spokesman for BP from the Unified Command's headquarters in Robert, La. "You have public information officers and you have a joint information center that includes the responsible party, BP, as well as government agencies who have involvement and oversight for this spill, the Coast Guard being the federal on-scene coordinator. We have state people, NOAA, representatives from Transocean. We've had MMS. What we do is use information that comes in through our operations and create, if you will, the message to share."

That message, right now, is that the authorities want to provide access to the story while maintaining the proper safety parameters for both cleanup workers and the environment itself. But there might be more obstacles down the road if the situation intensifies, according to Chip Babcock, a trial lawyer specializing in media and First Amendment cases at Houston firm Jackson Walker, which brought suit against FEMA when it blocked journalists from covering the removal of dead bodies in the weeks after Hurricane Katrina.

"There's going to be, I think, a natural hesitancy to let journalists show images of the horrific scenes that are going to happen purely in the next few weeks," Babcock said. "You'll see these beaches clogged with oil, and animals suffering, and I think -- human nature being what it is -- there's going to be some people who don't want those images shown."

washingtonpost.com