Gulf Oil Spill

The following is a legitimate attempt to get reasonable unemotionally biased answers. Please keep that in mind while answering should you choose to do so.

Please answer this question:

1. Who should pay for the clean up of the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico?

BP

BP should pay for all of it including reimbursing the government for the cost of the military, coast guard and corp of engineers. They reep all of the profit from the well and they are responsible for all of the costs involved in operating the well, which would include damages to the enviorment.

Good to see you Bartman.

I agree, it should be BP.

Thanks DD.

bp & the horizan I think it is the guys who started the well.

Based upon what we know now I would agree about it being BP but we've been lied to so much by both the government and the media that I'm not sure. All I know is someone will get screwed.

BP......because the government can't get damn thing......both of them are taking their time.

Who really pays for all of this?...SADLY...Every person, Every animal and Every piece of Nature. This is so devastatingly outrageous!!! The effects it will have now and long term are Astronomical.

Exactly what I thought when first saw thread. Well put Filth.

Well, in reality we all pay. Even if you decide to destroy BP, sell off all their assets to pay the costs, the cost is spread around.

BP stops paying taxes. BP employees lose their jobs, and we all lose out because they don't pay their taxes. The companies BP and its employees do business with lose out. BP is a public company, indirectly owned by retirement plans, small investors, people with deposits in banks, etc. BP isn't owned by fat cats. It's owned by you and me if we have any kind of savings, insurance, or retirement plans.

If we stop drilling, we in the US lose out because we now send our money to countries that hate us. The money that leaves the US costs us jobs and tax revenues. Us taxpayers and citizens absorb the difference.

Yes, we should make BP pay to the extent allowed by law. However, don't fool yourself, we all pay from an economic standpoint, no matter who pays, in theory.

I'd like to see BP go bankrupt. Not because they're evil or greedy. Because they're a phenomenally stupid company. They blew up their Texas City refinery, killing 15 and injuring 170 because of monumental stupidity. I have heard from several sources that BP is incapable of running their business. Not because of greed, because of stupidity. They can't run their internal projects, or even handle routine daily business processes because everything takes 27 levels of approvals scattered over 5 continents, 8 different companies, 4 languages, and 6 internal bureaucratic fiefdoms. They ran that incredibly stupid green "Beyond Petroleum" ad campaign with idiots talking about energy policy suggesting that if you just think green all our energy problems will go away.

BP makes the US government look efficient and well run.

We need to put BP out of business not because of what they did. We need to put them out of business because they'll do it again in some other fashion. Hopefully the BP managers and executives won't find employment elsewhere.

If BP is fined that cost will be passed on to the consumers. That is a problem.

I understand that the government had an agreement with BP to take action with those non-existent booms in the event of a major spill. The booms were never stowed and thus were unavailable.

It suddenly occurs to me; shouldn't we find out what happened first before we assign blame?

I still wonder why the administration dispatched SWAT teams to oil platforms instead of investigators. Do they know something that we don't?

I still think the timing of this oil rig collapse is interesting. I'm not normally a conspiracy theorist, but this smells like a well-timed disaster made just for the Bamster.

Like JG said, we should determine the real cause of the rig collapse before we assign blame; however, on the surface, given the information we have available, I believe that BP should be responsible for the costs of the spill. But, ultimately, as others have stated in this thread, the public will pay for this regardless if the costs are absorbed by BP in the form of higher prices for gas at the pump, or higher taxes if the government is held responsible. BP should NOT be fined however - they will have enough on their hands.

BP and Transocean should pay the damages.

JG, there has been enough testimony and first hand accounts to establish that plain old stupidity and hubris caused the blow out - no conspiracy.

As far as the SWAT teams go - they were sent out immediately after the rig fire, along with other government officials, to 'gather records'. I think the finger pointing started almost immediately, and the administration wanted to immediately catch other rigs committing safety violations...and the 'SWAT Teams' were security, in case things got contentious.

Who said anything about a conspiracy? I didn't... My background is engineering and I understand the multitude of things that can happen to a system to cause a failure. A part failed to do it's job (a blowout valve). Why? Poor manufacturing practices or poor maintanence? Was it a systematic failure because of poor design or was a component faulty? There are so many things that we don't know yet. I remind everyone of the Pacific Airlines plane that crashed a decade ago. There was a failure of the rudder mechanics. The root cause turned out to be a bolt manufactured in the People Republic of China and sold to the mid-level repair depot that maintained the aircraft. The bolt was not up to specs, nor had it been tested as required to determine it's suitability.
Back in 1990 the USS Iwo Jima pulled into Bahrain for simple repairs. The foreign workers had to replace the bonnet on the MS-2 valve in the fireroom. The workers found some black bolts in a work bench of the appropriate size and length. Not knowing the bolts were brass with an oxide coating instead of grade 8 steel the workers installed them in the valve. The engineering plant maintains steam at about 600 psi at a temperature of 800 degrees. Brass softens at 650 degrees. The valve blew and the space flooded with live steam. Eight sailors died in the hole, two escaped to die later from steam burns to their lungs. The root cause? An engineering senior chief had signed off on the repairs without actually inspecting the job. That was the navy finding. The repair crew lacked the knowledge the repair the valve without close supervision.

Unless it was a terrorist act, BP is responsible it's their well, if they would like to then sue their vendors or parts suppliers they are free to do that. They enjoyed their record profits, now its time to pay the fiddler. While I agree that the timing is a little suspicous, I refuse to say Obama had it blown up, that is about as silly a comment as those who say Bush blew up the world trade center in my opinion.