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More than six months after the BP oil catastrophe, the issues of reparations and repair and responsibility constitute a great deal of the breaking news surrounding this human and environmental disaster.
Feinberg wrestles with the issue of proximity claims. This NYT story does a good job of laying out the difficulties deciding how to pay claims to businesses not directly in the line of fire of BP's black monster.
What has scarcely been noted, however, is that virtually oil-free Florida just might hoover up the bulk of BP’s settlement money. The company has set aside $20 billion for a fund intended to make whole both private enterprises (for lost earnings) and the states and the federal government (for cleanup costs), with a promise to throw additional money in the pot if more is needed to cover legitimate claims.
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Already, the sheer number of Florida claims is outpacing those of Louisiana, among claimants who have provided addresses of where they suffered damages to the Gulf Coast Claims Facility, which is administering the BP fund: 35,500 versus just over 31,000, as of last week. Even businesses in Miami and Key West are lawyering up.
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Proximity claims, it turns out, fall into an area that has been debated for decades in law schools and in court opinions. Until early October, Kenneth Feinberg, the longtime mediator and the lawyer in charge of administering the spill fund, said publicly that he wouldn’t consider such claims, in part because he thought they would open a door that thousands of businesses across the country would try to walk through.
The theoretical possibilities are endless. A restaurant owner in Boston: "I had a Gulf shrimp scampi special that was off the menu for months. Pay me." A T-shirt maker in Tennessee: "I’m stuck with 10,000 ‘I Love Pensacola’ shirts. Pay me." These examples are just conjecture, but real ones are piling up. Thousands of claims from all 50 states have already been filed.
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Now, plaintiffs’ lawyers in Florida are already worrying aloud that BP hasn’t set aside the kind of money that would constitute real compensation.
"They’re worried that $60 billion won’t be enough, and they might be right," Mr. Feinberg said in a recent interview. "Especially if every single restaurant and hotel in Florida can simply stand up and say: ‘Before the spill. After the spill. Pay me the difference.’ "
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The other issue confronting Mr. Feinberg is one of sheer volume.
"If proximity isn’t a bar to claims, who knows how many there will be," he says.
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Working outside of the court system, Mr. Feinberg isn’t necessarily constrained by the act, or state or federal tort law. But to figure out what, if anything, these claimants should be paid, he needs a sense of what would become of them if they slogged through the dockets.
So Mr. Feinberg has quietly hired one of the country’s foremost scholars on torts — he declined to provide a name — to write a memorandum about the validity and value of proximity claims.
Just one small example of why the money set aside by BP won't be enough to adequately pay all claims.
http://www.baldwincountynow.com/...
Owning and managing a restaurant has never been easy, Lambert said, but the BP oil spill that hit the Gulf Coast this spring was a devastating blow to an industry already struggling to survive the challenging economic conditions of the past two years.
"We’re a seafood restaurant" she said, noting a recent poll that showed a majority of people are still afraid to eat local seafood. "We lost our lead product."
The restaurant filed claims with BP, and then with the Gulf Coast Claims Facility administered by Ken Feinberg. They received one check for $8,000 in June, and a second one last week for $16,200. That didn’t approach their projected loss of $25,000 a month over the next six months, she said.
How do you put a price on Mother Nature?
What is a brown pelican worth? Let's hope the government hangs tough on making BP pony up for the horror they inflicted on the Gulf.
It's a question that could consume environmental economists and scientists for years as they try to put price tags on the animals killed and habitat destroyed by the massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill — an environmental analysis federal officials describe as the largest of its kind. The federal and state authorities ultimately will send their bill to BP and the other companies responsible for the spill.
Along the Gulf Coast, scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and their state counterparts are counting dead and oiled wildlife, testing water and photographing marshes and shorelines to document damage done by the oil spill, which followed an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and the blowout of BP's well.
The federal and state officials, known in this process as trustees, will issue an assessment that includes a list of damaged resources and a plan for what the companies must do to restore the fish, birds and habitats the oil destroyed or how much they must pay to compensate the United States for its lost resources.
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Federal law requires a person or a business that despoils a wetland or other protected habitat to restore the land to its original condition. The company must pay the cost and compensate the U.S. for the loss of use while it was damaged.
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The Natural Resource Damage Assessment (NRDA) could take years, Strickland says. After the trustees compile the list of damaged property, they will develop a plan to restore spoiled habitat.
"It's going to be the most complicated NRDA analysis of all time," Strickland [Interior Department Assistant Secretary] says. "It's a big ecosystem."
The US is looking at using UK approach to offshore drilling as a model. As long as the addiction to oil continues one hopes our government will try something in the way of regulation with a good track record. What we have now is a white hot mess.
Washington has long sought to head off disasters such as the BP gulf oil spill by drafting and trying to enforce hundreds of detailed rules and regulations. Not only has that approach proved cumbersome and often ineffective, it ran the risk of failing to identify potential problems.
The British system, by contrast, puts the burden — and ultimate legal and financial responsibility — on oil and gas companies to figure out the myriad ways something could go wrong on a drilling rig or production platform, then show regulators the practices and technologies that would be used to avoid or deal with the problems.
The safety record of British operations in the often-turbulent North Sea suggests it can have major advantages.
With the British approach, "you as the operator have to make sure you catch everything," said John Crum, who has worked on offshore oil and gas projects in British waters and who is president of the North America unit of the independent oil company Apache.
"There's no excuse for you if things go wrong, because you're the one who wrote the plan," he said.
Versions of the approach, known as "safety case," are used by oil-producing countries around the world, from Norway to Australia, and many others are considering its adoption. Over the last decade, the safety case regime in Britain has led to a reduction in major offshore leaks by a factor of 10, according to Robin Pitblado of the risk management firm Det Norske Veritas.
More legal trouble for BP:
3 environmental groups sue BP over gulf oil spill
The suit, brought by the nonprofit groups Defenders of Wildlife, Gulf Restoration Network and the Save the Manatee Club, says that the April 20 Deepwater Horizon rig blowout and the resulting oil spill "have caused and will continue to cause the take of endangered and threatened species," including whales, manatees, birds and sea turtles that "show no avoidance response to oil slicks."
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The gulf region is home to at least 27 endangered or threatened species. The rig explosion killed 11 workers and spilled 4.9 million barrels of oil. More than 600 sea turtles were found dead and an additional 456 were found alive but soiled with oil. More than 4,300 oiled birds have been found, more than half of them dead.
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Justice Department officials have filed papers indicating they will probably file suit on behalf of the American public, possibly for violations of the Oil Pollution Act and the Clean Water Act. The government is pursuing a criminal investigation as well.
Let's hope that BP doesn't run out of cash.
BP to miss Big Oil's bumper Q3 due to oil spill
BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill meant it missed out on an industry-wide trend of higher profits and rising production in the third quarter, according to a Reuters poll.
BP's third-quarter replacement cost profit was forecast down 2 percent to $4.60 billion despite a 12 percent rise in crude prices, a 29 percent hike in U.S. natural gas prices and a doubling in British gas prices, the poll found.
By contrast, Royal Dutch Shell was expected to post a 50 percent rise in current cost of supply (CCS) net income to $4.3 billion.
Especially if Dudley raises stock dividends in order to keep his job:
BP Trailing Shell Puts Pressure on Dudley to Restore Dividend
BP Plc Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley’s task of lifting the share price after the Gulf of Mexico disaster is gaining urgency as the company falls further behind Royal Dutch Shell Plc.
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BP’s market value is about 43 billion pounds ($67 billion) lower than its rival, the widest gap since the height of the crisis on June 30. The Hague-based Shell, Europe’s largest oil company, has gained 5.2 percent this month, while BP shares have risen 0.2 percent. BP was worth more than Shell as recently as January.
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"BP is held by a lot of private investors and pension funds because of the dividend," said McLean, who helps manage about $900 million at SVM Asset Management in Edinburgh and sold all his BP shares this year. "If Dudley doesn’t pay it, the stock price will go lower and they’ll be more vulnerable."
Tony Hayward, Dudley’s predecessor who lost his job because of the Gulf spill, canceled BP’s 14-cents-a-share dividend for the first three quarters of 2010 to free up cash to pay for cleanup and compensation. Dudley said Sept. 30 that the board will meet before the end of the year to consider restoring the dividend "in some form" for the fourth quarter.
‘Potential Takeover’
In the future, "the reason for any potential takeover would be if Dudley doesn’t bring back the dividend," said Iain Armstrong, an analyst at investment manager Brewin Dolphin Ltd. in London. "He’s almost promised it, and if he doesn’t deliver, the stock will fall and the Chinese will be hovering over it."
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BP spokesman Robert Wine declined to comment for this story.
==== ROV Feeds =====
20876/21507 - Development Driller II's ROV 1
32900/49178 - Development Driller II's ROV 2
39168/39169 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 1
40492/40493 - Chouest Holiday's ROV 2
58406/21750 - Iron Horse ROV 1
The Development Driller 3 moved off from Relief Well #1's wellhead area at about 1:00 AM a week ago Saturday. She joined the Discoverer Enterprise, who's been stationary for the past month or so, approximately six miles northwest of the Development Driller 2. The Discoverer Enterprise is a dredger, and has been accompanied for some time by anti-pollution vessels, generally the Virginia Responder and the Mississippi Responder. The move by DD3 has not been reported in any news we've seen, but it's the first she's moved off the Macondo site since arriving to drill the relief wells with her sister ship, DD2.
In the meantime, the West Sirius (photos and descriptions and here and here), a semi-submersible driller, has replaced the DD3 beside DD2. Cargo ships, skimmers, and various other ships have been seen coming and going from the area of both Development Drillers on a regular basis.
That's a lot of action for the waters around a well that was supposed to be plugged and abandoned a long time ago.
==Multiple stream feeds (hard on browser/bandwidth)==
BP videos All the available directly feeds from BP.
Bobo's lightweight ROV Multi-feed: is the only additional up to date multiple feed site.
See this thread for more info on using video feeds and on linking to video feeds.
Previous Gulf Watcher diaries:
Gulf Watchers Sunday Edition - Will New Lawsuit Revive the Moratorium? - BP Catastrophe AUV #413 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #412 - gchaucer2
Gulf Watchers Wednesday Edition - 6 Months of Gulf Sorrow - BP Catastrophe AUV #411 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Monday Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #410 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #409 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Monday Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #408 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #407 - shanesnana
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #406 - Sunday Wrap - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #405 - bleeding heart
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #404 - peraspera
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #403 - Darryl House
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #402 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #401 - Lorinda Pike
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #400 - Yasuragi
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #399 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #398 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera/story/
Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #397 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers Morning Edition - BP Catastrophe AUV #396 - Gulf Watchers/peraspera
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #395 - Condition: transition - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - David PA
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #394 - Transitions - BP's Gulf Castastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #393 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #392 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - When Can we Share a Soda? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #391 - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Talking about Change - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #390 - Drips Redux - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #389 - Night of the Living Drips - Lorinda Pike
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #388 - Sittin' Up With the Dead - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #387 - Time for a Wake? - khowell
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #386 - The Coroner Won't Pronounce - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Yasuragi
Daily Kos Gulf Watchers ROV #385 - Is it Dead? - BP's Gulf Catastrophe - Lorinda Pike
The last Mothership has links to reference material.
Previous motherships and ROV's from this extensive live blog effort may be found here.
Again, to keep bandwidth down, please do not post images or videos.