[quote=UCGal][quote=KSMountain][quote=Arraya]The don’t want to stop it really. It’s a choice between collecting oil or stopping the leak. They can siphon but not stop it the way the damage happened. I suppose the could siphon enough to pay for the cleanup, maybe a little more, but people would not be too happy about them not stopping the leak.[/quote]
Let’s “Bring some Data”:
20,000 barrels per day at $75 per barrel. That’s assuming you could siphon all of it at neglibible cost (unlikely). But anyway, that would mean the value of what’s leaking is $1.5M per day.
Uh, they’ve spent a billion already, and likely going to be on the hook for say at least $10B. The current hit to their market cap is like $40B right?
10B/1.5M = 6667 days, or about 18 years. But I believe I heard the well would run dry on its own in 3 years…
I’m thinking all in all they’d prefer to stop the flow ASAP.[/quote]
It’s worse than that – minimum penalties for spilled oil are $1100/barrel. It could go up to $4300/barrel
I’d say they have motivation to stop or slow the leak. If you use the most conservative numbers presented – 5000 barrels/day – that’s $5.5M/day. That starts to add up to real money as the weeks go on.[/quote]
My understanding is BP, in theory has a limit on how much they *need* to pay, provided they aren’t found criminally negligent. Hence, why the investigation….But if BP is smart, they’ll settle outside of court. $10billion, they could absorb over a decade.
