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US Revises Estimate For The BP Oil Spill Higher For Third Time, Now At 35,000-60,000 Per Day As BP Cries Foul Over Counterparty Exposure
The US government has revised its estimate for the daily oil spill for the third time, now decidedly higher than the last iteration which was at 25,000-40,000 barrels per day. The latest estimate puts the high end another 50% higher, at 60,000 barrels. If this is indeed the case, it means that the amount of oil already having leaked could be as high a 3 million barrels, or 12 times the amount spilled in the Exxon Valdez. Whether this means that the previous estimate of a total possible BP liability and other payments of $80 billion have to be adjusted higher once again, is still unknown. We hope the president's speech at 8pm will provide some more clarity on whether or not today's BP CDS Spread around 500 is justified.
In other news, and as we discussed previously, the topic of BP counterparty risk is now approaching critical mass. In an exlcusive article, Reuters has reported that "Bank of America Merrill Lynch has ordered its traders not to enter into oil trades with BP Plc. that extend beyond June 2011." In other words, BofA is limiting the duration of all derivatives to one year. It also likely means that any on the run 5 year swaps have to be immediately unwound. And one can be certain BofA is not the only one doing this.
The order to the bank's traders came from a high-level executive and was made Monday, according to a source familiar with it. It told traders not to engage in trade with BP for contracts beyond one year from this month.
The directive didn't state a reason for the limit on longer-duration trades with the oil company, which comes as the British oil giant scrambles to stop an oil spill in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico for which it could eventually face billions of dollars in economic liabilities.
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Go long Corexit... Cha--ching!!
what is the cancer most likely to be caused by it? lung, skin, glands? i would long that.
Nowhere have I seen an estimate of how many barrels remain in this particular well. Anyone know ??
I shudder to think we will have to drain the entire underground inventory to stop it.
It seems Anadarko estimated 2 - 2.5 Billion.
found via naked capitalism,
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593#comment-648967
"According to BP data from about five years ago, there are four separate reservoirs containing a total of 2.5 billion barrels (barrels not gallons). One of the reservoirs has 1.5 billion barrels. I saw an earlier post here quoting an Anadarko Petroleum report which set the total amount at 2.3 billion barrels. One New York Times article put it at 2 billion barrels."
There are probably better sources, but you get what you pay for.
one theory says 30 years to empty. how many years to fill the oceans? how many hurricanes to wipe out life on the east coast? bp should have been taken over and the executives arrested weeks ago. there is no one running the country.
And what special talents will the government bring with their takeover? The ability to stop the pre-planned burn off of surface oil? The skill to not maintain on-hand or deploy the planned control booms? The talent to prohibit interim barriers from being constructed until they complete "reviews"? The shortsightedness to stop (or not accept) expertise from outside the country venturing in to assist in clean up and control operations? Be careful what you wish for. The Feds lack of preparation and slow-footed response has made things worse than they otherwise would be. BP will likely suffer the corporate death penalty, as perhaps it should. But the government taking over all operations, when they cannot even manage those items they are assigned to manage, is a recipie for enhanced disaster.
The last thing we need is the govn't looking after this mess and the last thing the govn't wants is for BP to go bankrupt. Than they are on the hook for the liabilities.
Haliburton and Transocean next?
Bhopal much dick cheese?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlUQ2sUti8o
Gulf Oil Spill ‘Could Go Years’ If Not Dealt With
author of Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order
by F. William Engdahl
June 10, 2010
"Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy". "When the Army Corps of Engineers first attempted to obtain NASA imagery of the Gulf oil slick, which is larger than is being reported by the media, it was reportedly denied the access. By chance, National Geographic managed to obtain satellite imagery shots of the extent of the disaster and posted them on their web site. Other satellite imagery reportedly being withheld by the Obama administration, shows that what lies under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be the size of Mount Everest. This information has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public, according to Madsen’s sources".
Full story here
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/engdahl/2010/0610.html
The subsurface strata is pourous not cavernous. The whole "cavern the size of mount everest" thing seems to have caught on, but it's an entirely inaccurate depiction.
That having been said, we're still fucked.
Reports at the time of the initial blowout were that BP was planning a press release touting 100 - 150 million barrels recoverable. Billion barrel numbers are ridiculous - anyone touting that can be immediately written off as not having a clue. Ditto for anyone claiming they "found one of the oil migration channels". Total clueless comment. Everything tried to date was an attempt to mitigate. Relief wells are the standard protocol to regain control in this situation and they will work (99% likelihood). However the key question is WHEN they will work and that will depend on how many attempts to intersect the borehole are required plus weather related issues (hurricanes will require moving off location).
+1,000 for smarts!
Yup... ain't gonna see that coming out of even one helluva giant hole... same for migration channels... there is only one channel and that is the well bore.
I like your sense of optimism on the relief wells working... those who know way more than I have considerable doubts. If the well holds together the chances are good (it's just a matter of time to reduced flows from reservoir pressure drops or successful relief well interception)
If not and we see more oil emerging from the sea floor like we currently are?
We are screwed.
a lotta wierd shit going on around the world but this gom thing scares the fucking shit out of me.
I saved your comment so that in a few months I can re-post it and remind you of how stupid I am.
You're nuts if you think the relief wells have a 99% chance of stopping the leak, and there is no standard protocol for deep water disasters.
And Simmons says in other story that a well head must be in place. He says none have been done without a well head. He says the velocity of the oil will tear the well head out eventually.
Anyone hear Simmons mention that "other hole" miles away from the riser? That bit about the riser just being a sideshow is what caught my attention.
99% figure is from industry analysts private communication. The standard protocol reference was to any serious lost well control issue. Relief wells are not new or untested technology. They work. Simmons comments have reached ludicrous levels - and I can assure you that the relief wells have wellheads, it's not possible to drill without them. When not if is the issue on the relief wells. Erosion of the existing pipe/wellhead at these huge flow rates IS a valid concern but that will not affect the ability to kill the well downhole - and these flow rates are likely also damaging the reservoir with a result that flow rates slow naturally eventually. Bottom line is these "Armageddon" pronouncements are ludicrous. It is always enlightening when a news story occurs where you have some modicum of expertise - you quickly realize that "journalists" and commenters are quite happy to pretend a level of understanding far beyond what they actually possess.
Gasmiinder, Here is your own quote, "Reports at the time of the initial blowout were that BP was planning a press release touting 100 - 150 million barrels recoverable. Billion barrel numbers are ridiculous - anyone touting that can be immediately written off as not having a clue." Quote..
Now i'm not a science rocket but lets try a little math... Estimates say the leak is now 60,000 barrels a day...60,000 barrels a day x 58 days leaked = 3,480,000 barrels total leaked. Based on your theory the well should have dried up 32 days ago!
Remember people oil and water just don't mix. Or is it people don't mix with oil in water?
I get so confused.
But it's still safe to eat the seafood and vacation.
I love my government.
If we were to dump about 12 million barrels of vinegar in the GoM, and add some pepper and italian spices, we could bottle it and make a killing.
A killing, indeed.
+35-60,000
When life gives you lemons... :)
Don't worry, it will be on its way to Iceland soon, you wont have to come down here to do that.
I wanna start an over under on the spill reports eventually being greater that 100K barrels per day.
Initial odds:
100K and over: +110
Under 100K: -120
any suggestions? I mean, we are all gambooooooolers now aren't we?
Change...
...you can count on.
You can count on the GOM changing.
No more gulf shrimp for the foreseeable future either.I will miss it.
Priceless!
If beach houses on the gulf side of Florida go to 20 cents on the dollar - I am a buyer
Dunno. Those fumes coming off the water will get ya pretty high after a while. The houses won't be worth 20 cents at that point.
Do we have an over/under on when Barky plans to do anything substantive? I'm thinking about 3 months after it's too late there will be a study group tentatively formed with a 2 year timeline to report.
Precisely!
With this pace of updates, we´ll be soon at 100 000 barrels per day.
3 million barrels - that's just a little less than was lost at sea in World War II when German U-Boats torpedoed 16 tankers in the Gulf of Mexico and 23 more along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard.
This is what a geologist told me too. It helps to keep things in perspective. A lot of emotion in this story
Sorry but it's not a fair comparison. All those torpedoed tankers didn't have every single tank compartment blown open and drained. And all these tankers didn't all go down in the same place. And these tankers went down in two oceans, not one Gulf. I could go on but you understand that the comparison isn't even apples and oranges.
The oil spill into the strait near Kuwait was the largest oil spill in world history. Life is pretty much the same there now as long as you aren't running from depleted uranium rounds
Correct... there never was a lot of life springing forth from the desert sands...
:-)
plus torpedoed oil burns.
But that was fuel oil, aviation fuel and kerosene, not crude. Big difference...
About half the lost oil was indeed raw crude, and lot's more was bunker fuel - just slightly lighter than crude. And no one cleaned it up. Booms, dispersants - those didn't exist.
So this well is going to set the record for the most productive Gulf well ever - by far - despite still having the drill and lots of broken bits of cement/casing still stuck in it?
A record-breaking Gulf well is/was 15,000 barrels a day. This ones output is being "estimated" from all the emulsified slop floating about on the surface - not a notably accurate form of measurement with nothing previous for comparison.
BP is being deliberately set up for a takeover.
I hear ya, but im assuming an uncontrolled and broken well leaks a lot more than it would under normal, safe circumstances.
I should not have laughed that hard...
The completed production well flow has to do with pressure differential, field size and depth, field porosity and so on. You never ever open the tap full on a well if you want the well to produce as much as it can for as long as it can. In fact, opening the well fully up for a long enough time (depending on the field, this could be months to a few years) actually damages the field and lowers the total recoverable oil/gas, sometimes by 50% or more.
So your comparison of shallow GOM wells with lower pressure and lower porosity that are not turned full on and what's going on with BP is a non starter. The other deep sea wells were expected to produce 30k to 60k in this same field and in adjacent fields under production circumstances, not wide open. Spend a few days learning the subject rather than reading a 10 paragraph CNN article.
We are becoming such great learners here CD...
Say when is Chapter 5 going to be released if you don't mind me asking?
Friday evening would be good for me... and as a bonus you will get mucho posts from the intensive weekend exposure!
(Although you are doing quite nicely in the post count department already my friend!)
I'm shooting for Friday for chapter 5, but no promises.
And chapter 4 just passed 29,000 reads, a near record for contributors as far as I can tell. Though Tyler and Marla have put up a few that have gone to 45,000 or more. I suspect this is because my series has been re-posted on dozens of web sites. People are interested to read my series to see if their neighbor is insane. Of course they aren't, just the neighbor. :>)
You my friend are making an impact!
Good on you.
Fair point; so what would your informed estimate be of the flow-rate - given what's currently known of the damaged state of the well?
I'm going 80-100K... they are getting closer to admitting that by the hour it seems.
That said this administration (like those preceding it) are incapable of telling the truth.
Who really knows but considering they (BP) are taking in 15,000 a day from the containment "dome" and processing it at the surface and it hasn't made a dent, it might be even higher.
Has it been established whether that is a net 15,000bpd of crude - or a mixture of oil, seawater and the methanol they are reportedly injecting as anti-freeze?
Would you agree that attempting to produce any flow estimate of a mile-deep blowout from aerial surface surveys is so inaccurate as to be disingenuous.
I fully agree it's very difficult to measure the flow. Which is why I won't quote numbers thou I will say it's clearly much much more than 15,000. And the 15,000 is actual processed crude after separation and treatment per BP and the WH. The gas a flared and the sea water is treated and dumped.
15,000 crude oil per day. And they now have another processing ship along side that can take it up another 8,000 per day. And more coming. This is why they had to increase the estimate. You don't want to be processing more crude than you estimate is coming out. It kills your credibility.
Screw the 15,000 CD... it's chump change.
I say 100,000 from the BOP but don't forget there is probably a huge (unmeasurable) amount coming from those leaks on the ocean floor and no way to quantify it.
Later!
The well casing is about the diameter of a barrel of oil, it was a JET of oil coming out, several barrels a second 60*60*24. That's a shit load.
BP is not being setup, they set us up (US).
If you boycot BP you also boycott funding of the UK government. Sorry across-the-pond dudes, get ready for a little jolt.
One barrel per second (as you indicated) is 86,400 per day. It looks like more than that to be but I tend to err on the conservative side at times...
At 60,000 barrels/day, & 55 gals/barrel, we've got 3,300,000 gals/day. An Olympic pool 50 meters x 25 meters x 2 meters holds 660,000 gallons. Which translates neatly to 5 Oly-sized swimming pools of crude oil gushing into the Gulf every day. Since April 20, which was 56 days ago, we get 280 pools so far. Please check my work. I'm just trying to get a handle on how much of this goop is ruining the Southeastern United States.
At what point is the entire Carribean - or even big parts of the Atlantic - at risk?
Now. Rephrase the question? I'm not informed enough to answer the real question you want answered. But they are "at risk" NOW. They already have found oil in the Gulf Stream.
At what point is the entire Carribean - or even big parts of the Atlantic - fucked?
There are some scientists saying that the Gulf stream can whip it around FL and up the coast and out into the world, giving the whole globe a taste (Europe, etc.) in 18 months. I have not found the article I read, but I found these maps and discussion that shows how it could happen.
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/ocean-current-7b.jpg
http://content.screencast.com/users/buddawiggi/folders/Jing/media/e4d559f7-72a3-42ef-8409-17a675de3f5e/2010-06-11_0838.png
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE-1G_476nA&feature=player_embedded
One barrel of oil is 42 US gallons......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_barrel
1 Bbl = 42 gallons > 2.5M gallons/day > ~4 pools
Why are we mixing the Imperial (barrels, gallons) with metric (meters). Getting very confusing.
So, are you trying to imply that oil swimming will be the next big olympic sport? Will that include synchronized oil swimming? And oil diving? Thanks!
Barreels of Oil are only 42 gal.
Let's see...
5,000 - Nope
10,000 - Nope
25,000 - Nah
30,000 - Whoops
60,000...JESUS CHRIST
80,000...Tomorrow
Uh....can we not forget that this will go on FOR MONTHS!
At least this will make Consumer Confidence SOAR like a condor.
Yup. Im waiting for the 'official' revision to be somewhere around 1 trillion barrels/day. Enough to get everyone and their grandmother upset at BP.
And of course, this is bullish news as we know it.
It's like going back and revising the GDP and unemployment numbers!
ROFL why doesn't anybody look at Rolling Stone's picture of such an estimate 64,000-110,000 barrels a day on April 22nd, by NOAA. That's right, the gov't had an estimate like this (and probably before) TWO days after the explosion. So what's with this, 3rd revision 2 months later, and it still only barely breaches the lower bound of the estimate? Just goes to show you, Obama has been kissing the Queen's butt since the get-go, and please don't end BP's support for the CCX in Chicago.
Look, if you intend to simply hide behind the facts of the matter...maybe this place isn't for you.
B.P, Halliburton and Transocean have unleashed Armageddon and now there is no stopping it.www.opednews.com/articles/B-P-Halliburton-and-Trans-by-Chris-Landau-100611-452.html
Looks like an article from the national enquirer....wonder if aliens had anything to do with it.
Please people.....it's just oil, and yes....it actually decomposes...and yes, bacteria actually eat it. There's an app for that. One guy on here said that it will take "6000 years" for things to return to normal. Oil folks....not radioactive isotopes. Yes, short term it's gonna be a shitty mess and I feel for those folks. The relief well will be drilled and they will fix the leak and all this will be a long lost CNN hype moment to distract people from selling their stocks.
Thank you for the balanced common sense. That said, I am appreciative of the emotional herding because that is what creates opportunity, like for example buying RIG at $42 last week. up 15% in four trading days (and out)
Reminds me of the days of H1N1.....run for your lives!
Relief wells will have zero effect, the problem is more dynamic than you apparently are aware...The major exposure is in the containment / ocean floor...no side drilling well, will solve this issue. The top kill was suspended the same day because the 20,000 PSI was opening the well drain,,,breaching the drill shaft,,this caused the ten other fissures in the ocean bed to expel the brown element you have observed in the pelican heart tug..
Whats coming out of the well HEAD is sheen,,, not the major issue , It would appear from other elements of inquiry and the fact that the Ocean Saratoga is also leaking and has been leaking since at least April 30.
This has dire implications, your cavalier meter has pegged....
There is a lot of fear out there and a lot of brilliant minds are working on the problem. A solution will be found. If not, America has found a massive source of cheap oil. Just skim and serve.
Honesty...what a concept.Thank you for your post.Only a few can discern the machinations which conceal the horror behind the curtain.Based on what little I have, the relief well will not work...and the formation is too unstable to plug at the depth they need.Uncontrolled deposit bleed out.20 to 30 years.
Fishing?Not so much.People I know with a clue are not optimistic, to the point of recommending not going to work, spending time with the family, and getting as drunk as possible.
I have no idea if this is an ELE.But I do know that if it is,TPTB won't tell us.
We will get to find out ourselves.
Greed driven species FAIL?I really hope not.
Ok time to get back on the meds!
Stand by for the flow upgrade in a few more weeks to 100k+.
And the "delays" in the relief well stopping the flow.
I really hope I am wrong.And if I am right...meds won't help.Not even a little.
I bought a Wii to play kids' party games. I want to do the most mindless things I can discover. Anyone with ideas?
if matt simmons has his way it will be radioactive isotopes.
You have no idea what you are talking about.
People with experience in dealing with oil-impacted environments are saying this will be a decades-long nightmare. If you want proof, read up on the current (as of the below 1999 account) state of things at Prince William Sound:
And that was a low-productivity cold-water habitat, with rocky shores that could be steam-cleaned with detergents (which they were as a team of 300 biologists collectively lost their minds in grief.)
But that was cake. How do you clean an oil-fouled wetland: You truck the top 36" of topsoil and vegetation to a Class 2 licensed hazardous waste dump and pave it over. Maybe they'll repurpose the entire state of Arkansas for the disposal.
The states in contact with the GoM are one Presidential decree away from becoming one huge SuperFund site. Those people are so fucked up it will take them 10 years just to quantify the level of fucked up they are.
Get a Ph.D so you can add something useful or else STFU, crackhead.
And this leak is in a very hot and humid environment. Oil breakdown will occur at much faster pace than Alaska. Up here in Alberta we have a very massive oil spill and it is in our sand too. Happens to be quite profitable and useful:) Not saying this isn't a tragedy - it is. It's gonna take some time and ingenuity to correct it, but life will return. Unfortunately, this is the price we pay for our love affair with SUV's and plastic houses.
Hey you ignorant fuck, leave me and my State out of this. We here in AUKANSAW have the 2nd largest shale/frac project in the U.S. going on, we can burn your ASS with our tapwater if need be. Seriously everybody just needs to step back, take a deep breath, and resolve to end the neverending confusion that seems to be the norm these days. After all this aint no brain surgery/ rocket science. Just COMMON SENSE.
@ geminiRX
Bacteria 1: "I'm loving all this oil but I'm tasting a little something else. It's quite tangy."
Bacteria 2: "Oh, it's the only A1 of oil dispersants: Corex-it. Cute name, no?"
Bacteria 1: "Eh, I think I'm done feeding for the moment. Feeling a little sick to my stomach."
They are lying about everything. This is a disaster of epic proportions. The Dust Bowl will seem like peanuts compared to this, think mass exodus. Puny humans.
What a load of shit!
You are a moron. I used to work for these companies. You have no idea what you are talking about.
And you are a hysterical fear-monger, with an axe to grind. Fuck you.
And you are a moron. A 16 yr old one with really bad acne and greasy hair.
Get 'em Kali!
Wasn't ZH once known for the quality of it's discourse?
"Wasn't ZH once known for the quality of it's discourse?"
Yeah, but it's on a different course now.
No it's not. The community has only grown. Go to the low-count financial posts and you'll see plenty of "financial" info if that's what you're looking for.
Yes thats why we draw the finest retard this place up agents on the planet. We've killed several of them but they were the lowlings. We are working on the bosses now. The creme de la tard.
Did anyone notice the Dow was up 200 points today?
Preview of Obama's address tonight:
It's safe to visit the Gulf's pristine, white sand beaches. It's safe to eat tarballs and drink a tall, refreshing glass of crude oil. It's safe to breathe benzene and hydrogen sulfide at 1000x dangerous concentrations. It's better than safe to roll around in three million gallons of toxic, carcinogenic dispersants-- superpowers are way cool. So buy forty iPads, buy stocks, borrow $500,000 for a McMansion, let me be clear, trust me, etc
WORD!
OK, clearly I'm an uncool Depends wearing old fart. Now that I have admitted this, would someone please explain to me what "WORD!" means?
Thanks in advance.
CD, think of it as "Truth".
word up
for all old farts and midaged farts:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=word
Thank you from an old fart. Check out IMAX.
Also equivalent to whenever someone likes a comment here and posts +1 or +(insert extremely big integral)
PS - my 'word' is not said in the gangsta way:)
I thought it was complementary and I didn't even think about gangsta. But I've been skipping past your usage for months and I figured I'd better ask at some point.
Thanks.
He is from Hawaii, he likes black beaches. He is really comfortable with them.
"...but don't forget the sunscreen."
What price tag is hanging on the Everglades and the Outer Banks? I gotta think that's worth a tad.
delete
Oh, hell, Tyler, why stop there? Why not just call it a GILLION barrels a day? Why not just claim that the losses are a number that cannot even be calculated???
This is just fucking grotesque...
@Gordon Freeman
Given that it occurred in 5000 feet of water and there are no known methods or apparatus for measuring the blow-out, one could make a rational argument that the losses are impossible to calculate accurately. BP's willful negligence and outright lies are extremely grotesque.
You said it shorter, better, with less emotion, and beat me to it. Nice.
@MsC
That means a lot coming from you. :)
What, that your life will not go on as you have known it? That we really fucked up big this time? That we are not omnipotent and have limits we just violated? That our government is so used to lying that they make it SOP and probably have marketing experts and formulas that they consult for how to handle situations like this? That you don't want to entertain getting your brain around this? That you can't be open to the idea that this just might be as bad as a comet hitting the earth and that the show has just gotten started?
Look, I don't claim to know the truth, so I have to stay open to it that this could only be fucking bad, or it could be an extinction event. Because they don't share what they know with us, they set it up so that we will speculate based on what we can know.
I think it is possible that THE LOSSES CANNOT BE CALCULATED.
Ya but it's safe to say it will be around what FDIC needs for the next couple months. LOL
Watch the preleude to Cap And Trade speech tonight at 8:00...I'm surprised they didn't make it a higher number just to really stick a fork in us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjMTNPXYu-Y&NR=1
If this hole was gushing something worth money, you'd think we'd be all over it....hang on a sec
Well, I am actually waiting for the Oil Spill Hollywood Disaster Movie so that I can bet on it in the Hollywood Index or whatever the fuck it is. /sarcasm off.
wait till they cry uncle and declare
The Marshal Islands are to blame: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-oil-inspection-20100615,0,3043517,full.story
This is reminiscent of Vietnam. Maybe we're a powerful and wealthy society, but it doesn't ensure that we can actually control your fate.
"I love the smell of heavy oil in the morning!"
We can pump the oil to the ice caps and torch it. This will melt the caps, raise the sea level. On paper it should be enough to drown the Marshall Island bastards that attacked our great, sovereign nation.
Screw N Korea and Iran, this is a fucking act of war !
We already nuked them 68 times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Islands#Nuclear_tests_after_World_...
Not sure drowning would even faze them.
Word!
Well played, almost. Full on belly laughed at that one! Somehow, I think someone at a think tank actually has a power point to this effect.
F*ck Marshal Law.
Suggestion for a new poll: What's the over/under on new jobs creation for the June NFP vs. the number of bbls. leaked per day.
lol! I'd like to see it for June 2012. We may be missing a large portion of the need for employment. Permanently.
I'm considering a rickshaw business for 2012 (j/k for all the bulltard lurkers out there).
Tyler, since you seem to have the ear of Mr. Van Praag...Could you kindly ask him why a Goldman Employee would say "Suck It Fishes and Birdies!" in regards to the massive GoM short position taken the day before the Deep Horizon sank into the gulf?
"NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report) - In what is looming as another public relations predicament for Goldman Sachs, the banking giant admitted today that it made "a substantial financial bet against the Gulf of Mexico" one day before the sinking of an oil rig in that body of water. The new revelations came to light after government investigators turned up new emails from Goldman employee Fabrice "Fabulous Fab" Tourre in which he bragged to a girlfriend that the firm was taking a "big short" position on the Gulf. "One oil rig goes down and we're going to be rolling in dough," Mr. Tourre wrote in one email. "Suck it, fishies and birdies!"
The news about Goldman's bet against the Gulf comes on the heels of embarrassing revelations that the firm had taken a short position on Lindsay Lohan's acting career."
the sad thing is, if I didn't see the "Borowitz Report" tagline, I woulda believed it. Think Enron energy traders and CA grannies.
indeed. here's the direct link via huffpo:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/goldman-sachs-reveals-it_b_5...
Kevin Costner's brother will save us.
Hell of a well!!!!! They'd better get that sucker going soon if we all expect to be driving SUVs at 3 dollar gas!
Re the second part of the post on BP counterparty risk, Morgan Stanley has significant (but perhaps not material) exposure to BP through a roundabout commodity handling deal with Ineos, one of the largest petrochemical businesses in the world. The actual details are all private, but a HY analyst at Deutsche reminded about this a few days ago. Ineos acquired BP's Innovene petrochemicals business in 2005 for around £5bn and set off alot of the commodity risk to MS via derivatives and commercial agreements.
The details aren't important. The message is BP counterparty risk runs wide and deep - few will have even begun to chart the risk paths.
Market needs an excuse to sell off now. Obama's tone will be grim and the MSM will hype it tomorrow for the "doomsday effect."
Everything is so well choreographed that it's sickening.
With free flow dynamics at this site, maybe 60KBPD is a bit understated.
Check out BP's nearby Thunderhorse Platform, producing oil at 250KBPD.
http://www.bp.com/sectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9030433&contentId=7055435
There are some blowouts, such as a nat gas well that imploded in Turkmenistan (or one of the "stans"), burning since 1971. The hydrocarbon reservoirs can last quite some time. Then there is the problem with a ruptured casing (from excess pressures, or from the very few centerings to hold the concentric pipes in position, allowing them to move against, rub, or beat the wall of each other, the possibly fractured / fissured geology, etc.
And this is all a man-made catastophe IMO.
I raised the following question a little farther up - Where are we at on Simmons claim that there might be a hole, several miles away from the riser, which is the real culprit? I didn't hear him mention this on the clip.
BP assets domiciled in U.S. constitute roughly 25% of total assets. BP is going to surrender U.S. assets and walk away from Gulf disaster. If true, stock is a buy and world is disgusting.
Read this oildrum post that endeavors to get to the bottom of what is going on in the Gulf: http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6593/648967
The poster, who sounds like he may know what he is talking about, concludes that: 'the magnitude and impact of this disaster will eclipse anything we have known in our life times if the worst or even near worst happens'...
Thanks for the link. Sounds legit'.
The revised ZH number is 120K bbl/day
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/matt-simmons-revises-leak-estimate-1200...
According to previous metrics this is equivalent to approximately an Exxon Valdez catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico every 2 days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill
[snip] "The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred in Prince William Sound, Alaska, on March 24, 1989, when the Exxon Valdez, an oil tanker bound for Long Beach, California, hit Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef and spilled an estimated minimum 10.8 million US gallons (40.9 million liters, or 250,000 barrels) of crude oil. "
Since April 20, 2010, the date of the rig disaster, this adds up to 28 Exxon Valdez oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico....and counting!
OilBPama... redefining false flag for a new green paradigm
http://www.prisonplanet.com/obama-to-push-nightmare-carbon-tax-in-oval-o...
http://info-wars.org/2010/06/11/attorney-deepwater-horizon-managers-knew...
The magnitude of this disaster only underscores the real cost of oil dependance in our society and the fact that the cost per barrel will continue to grow. No one can quantify the loss to the ecosystem, although everyone is talking compensation to humans directly effected. We can look forward to a greedfest of litigation to cash in on BP's huge equity.
We also need to be reminded that the costs of the invasion and occupation or Iraq was for the benefit of international oil companies, and represents a huge per barrel subsidy to the oil industry, who were running the US at the time of the Iraq invasion. The industry continues to exercise undue influence on US government policy.
There is only one course of action that will mitigate the true costs of this oil dependance and that is a mandated change to energy conservation, improved efficiency, greener fuels and technologies. The likelihood of such leadership coming from Congrass or Foxnews is small.. it must come from the people who are willing to start thinking outside the self imposed (and false) idealogical barriers promoted by the corporate oligarchs who are violently opposed to giving up their monopolistic profits.