Of all the damage that the British Petroleum has caused, and continually causing to the Gulf coast, the only just thing for the U.S. government can and should do to secure the financial responsibility to clean up the Gulf coast is to seize BP’s assets. And not just because this is BP, if it was any other oil cartel, even if based out of U.S. I would recommend the same.
The current British Petroleum fiasco is much bigger than Valdez fiasco, and the only way to ensure that the citizens of the world (Gulf coast) won’t get screwed is to seize their assets to make sure that we can compensate everyone involved, including the environment, and so that BP can’t drag this fight over the years in court.
Not to mention that there is a good chance that BP may be filing for bankruptcy soon.
Look, Exxon got sued over Valdez, and was ordered to pay about 5 billion dollars in damages. Exxon appealed and dragged the case for years and ended up paying less than a billion dollars in punitive damages, including interest for delaying the payment, leaving so many businesses to die and never to properly recover their livelihoods.
Meantime, there is still about 26,000 gallons of oil that remains in the soil and sand in Alaska from the Valdez incident (no wonder Sarah Palin is a nut, but that is not the point here,) not to mention so many livelihoods lost, without any compensation – at least a fair compensation.
I bet, once assets are frozen, they will come up with a fix – PRONTO. Assets should only be released as the Gulf coast cleans up and the merchants who have lost their livelihoods because of this BP fiasco are properly and sufficiently compensated.
In addition, I think it would be wise to start asking for escrow money of about 10 billion dollars from every major oil company to put in an international escrow fund, should shit like this happens again.
Any objections?
Dorian
P.s. this is a crime of the century!