Miss. Gov.: $20B escrow by BP might hurt, not help

Source: Associated Press

Mississippi's governor said Wednesday he's not sure the federal government should have made BP put $20 billion into escrow to compensate victims of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill because the company needs it to drill more wells and make money so it can pay up.

President Barack Obama insisted BP set the money aside, and the company agreed to put $5 billion a year into the fund for the next four years.

"If they take a huge amount of money and put it in an escrow account so they can't use it to drill oil wells and produce revenue, are they going to be able to pay us?" Gov. Haley Barbour told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Wednesday.

...

"We need them to generate revenue to be able to pay us," said Barbour, a Republican. "I worry that this escrow account reduces the chance of that rather than increasing the chances of that."



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrqKnOqRzjl7TFo58fG4KOxpFL7wD9GCLQPG3

What a total ass.

I hoe this has been caught on tape so it can be used when he runs for re-election.

:evilfrown:

J,

to answer your note, I haven't seen him and am quite puzzled with his absence.

THIS guy:

:evilfrown:

Evil bastard!

They'll be bankrupt before they every put a dime into the escrow account anyway.

will come from severe cutbacks in planned capital expenditure which means, aside from other issues, you can forget any new wells out there anyway. The escrow a/c is for the overall good : there will be winners and losers.

"Tis better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt."

Barbour: STFU

My god....

The company's assets are worth over 200 billion dollars dumbass.

I think Boss Hogg was smarter...

that's right. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 billion dollars. It will only take 6 months of sales to recoup the dollars. If they're not planning on maintaining those quarterly profits, then perhaps they should cut back on salaries and executives? If they haven't saved any of their record profits, then shame on them and let the market do what it does to poorly managed corporations.

BP's dick out of his mouth for long enough to make that statement.

i know there`s good people in the state but my god the people who voted for him......are just as fucking stupid as he is

The greedy bastards will figure out how to hide it from the victims if we give them too much time.

He's rich.
Care to guess where his money comes from?
He knows who has been paying his bills .... for now.

But his time is coming.
Real fricking fast.

Despite some disappointment with Obama, I can't get too worked up because the alternative is absolutely loony. I remember what it was like during the Bush years, and if anything, the Repuke party has gotten even worse since.

please, let them be excluded from any money this fund - hopefully - doles out to clean up the mess. Barbour is a political BP disaster.

And exactly how much BP stock do you own?

How do you think they make 10 billion a quarter? From finding or aquiring new resources, that's how. Here's a primer on how a major integrated oil company works

1. Spend money to find oil
2. Drill for oil. Maybe find it on that 25 million dollar well you just drilled. Maybe not.
3. Sell oil to refineries, maybe your own, maybe someone elses
4. Process oil at your refineries, maybe your own, maybe someone elses
5. Sell products (gas, lubes etc) - hey, we're finally making money!
6. Listen to people tell you how it shouldn't matter if we take all your capital away because everyone knows we just go to the end of the rainbow and shovel gold into our pockets. The rest is just a front.

So yeah, let's run 'em out of business and then make them pay us a billion dollars a month for eternity. Sounds good on paper.

Go ahead, bring the hate.

The oil investment money will just go to other companies.

Besides, do you think a company -- where future "profits" will be earmarked for paying off people they screwed -- is going to attract a lot of capital? Unless they come up with a plan, get what we can upfront, fine the hell out of them, make them liquidate and let BP sink for their incompetence and greed.

Or . . . . . .take em over and manage the assets ourselves for the good of those screwed by BP.

Causing an environmental disaster.
I believe you just made the perfect argument against offshore drilling.
The risks are getting too large for the slim chances of finding oil.

That argument does lead to the conclusion that the risks are unacceptable from both environmental and financial perspective.

:hi:

Most majors are way more safety oriented than BP, because they know there's not much they'd be able to do if they lost control of it. BP got lazy and greedy. The more I think about it maybe it would be best if they just went under and sold all their operations to more responsible operators.

I don't hate you.
I pity you. Just as I pity the poor uneducted southern masses who keep voting for the very same people (Haley Barbor) that serve to oppress them. Those poor uneducated masses, at least a few million along the coasts, just got an education this Spring about who their masters really care for.

As to your poor BP. Boo frickety hoo , cry me a river if they go under.
I'll tell you what we should do.
We should freeze every asset in the U.S.A. that BP owns. Every tanker , every gas station, every refinery, every ounce of oil, every bank account, every building that they own. Everything. And we should take it away from them ... run it as a Nationalized gas company or sell it off. Whatever. And by the way we should take the million dollar homes and yahts away from every major shareholder in that company and every top level executive. Sell them off too.

Use the proceeds to clean the coast and compensate the millions who will be out of work for years. Use the proceeds to fix the endless health issues this will cause.

And screw BP.
They may be your Master but they aren't mine.

exposed to disperants that cause cancer and birth defects. this company will be killing us forever and the oil will NEVER, repeat NEVER, EVER be gotten rid of. IT WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.

that is the whole point in drilling them and then owning them. They do not need to drill a single well to continue to make money for the forseeable future. The process they were engaged in when the macondo well blew up was capping it for use in production at a later date. I would put good money on the notion that they have other wells sitting capped waiting to be brought on line as needed. Demand for oil and the capacity to refine it is not infinite. Supply, in case you haven't noticed it, is regulated to prevent a glut that would lower prices.

And even though wells produce for 20+ years, you've got to constantly be putting more projects online to replace them when they do peter out. Replacement volumes are a huge factor in an oil companie's stock price. Ever notice that even when Exxon was making billions their stock price didn't move too much? It's all about how many more reserves they're adding, not how much money they happen to be making at the time.

They deserve it.

up here. go and defend them somewhere else. hows that for the 'hate'?

and do the right thing and put the rest of their profit from their existing oil supply. BP is what? the second largest in the world? They have PLENTY of oil wells elsewhere to continue to make an obscenely huge profit AND pay off the residents in the Gulf region.

So they can't locate and acquire new wells at the moment. Fine by me. If that means they slip to (gasp!) the number 3 spot, or even the number 4 spot - hell yeah, even the bottom spot, I'm not worried. They have enough resources to pay for as long as it takes from what I can see.

Honestly, I bet BP is relieved Obama asked for so little. $20 billion from a company making $10 billion A QUARTER is (relatively speaking) pocket change. I bet there wasn't anything more than a bit of internal giggling from the BP execs in the room. I think they believe they got off damn lightly.

This doesn't limit their liability though, they could still be on the hook for much more. Believe me, it won't break my heart but if they do go under it'll be a lot harder to squeeze more money out of them because the British Government will probably say they have first dibs or some such thing.

would diminish their ability to make whole people they have harmed?

:crazy:

That money wasn't going to go into finding and drilling new wells. The agreement is that they will put $5B a year in escrow for four years. That can easily be covered by reducing dividends. Barbour is indeed an idiot if he thinks the escrow account will destroy BP's profitability, and of course the BP honchos wouldn't have agreed to it so readily if there was any chance it would.

:shrug:

as if we give a fuck about business, especially businesses that destroy everything around them for greed.

BP's shares are up 10% on the news of the escrow account and Moody's has returned them to the "buy" category.

Prior to indicting those who disagree with your position of 9self-validating) "hate", might I suggest you keep abreast of the current analysis of BP's financial prospects and portfolio...?

Especially anyone PAID to defend them on a Liberal website.

Tell your boss Mr. Heyward that this dolphin wants his life back. :grr:

The oil won't disappear, the equipment won't just vanish, the refineries will (hopefully) be improved and run by a better firm....

BP has a demonstrably worse safety and environmental record than other oil companies, so perhaps they should go, it's not as if there isn't anyone waiting eagerly to take over their assets.

I do have this great textbook that BP once published called "Our Industry Petroleum" It's old (1970), but very good, it's where I learned about tertiary recovery, cat cracking and bubble caps........

to another outfit

BP is one of six giant vertically integraetd global oil firms. That means the refineries they use are ALWAYS their own. So not only do they make money at every step of the process, they can shi9ft profits around from one division -- or country -- to another, for tax purposes or to squeeze out competitors by artificially lowering prices (for themselves).

Signed,
Jack Crap

some refineries are owned by the major, some are independent like Valero, some are run by governments (well, by oil companies for governments)

One of the key issues in whether a field will be economic (besides it's size) is how close it is to a natural gas market or oil refinery.

I think a lot of companies have a 2a. We seldom hear about it until too late.
Like the Massey mines.

Is he volunteering to have the State of Mississippi compensate Mississippi victims of the spill? Because if Mississippi doesn't get BP to set that money aside now, it will never get it.

I know whereof I speak.

is because they expect this many claims, perhaps more. Maybe Mr. Barbour doesn't think BP should have to pay.

The point of a third party escrow account is to allow the mediated settlement of large numbers of claims, which will be far more numerous than BP and its lawyers can hope to process in any reasonable time. This is actually a big service to both the people and BP because the commission can staff up to handle the massive pile of paperwork, and assist the people trying to complete claims. This is the way the SBA moves in after a natural disaster and offers help to those seeking funds.

"We need them to generate revenue to be able to pay us," said Barbour...

WTF? Why should YOU be paid, Mr. Barbour, if there is minimal impact in Mississippi.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/16/bp-oil-spill-mississippi-barbour/

And even if there were oil washing up like it is in Louisiana (Jindal's no better, actually) why would Mr. Barbour be talking about "us?" Is he maybe worried about his future campaign funds and not the fishermen and others along the coast? Is that the "US" he's talking about?

Here's the story:

###

Mississippi's Haley Barbour, a well-connected former Washington lobbyist, has calmly said the oil slick looming offshore is just a sheen in most places and there's no reason for people to panic.

* * *
Barbour, 62, is a second-term governor who was in office during Katrina and was widely praised for his response to the storm. He's now chairman of the Republican Governors Association. Barbour has said the oil spill is "not Armageddon," but he believes news coverage has hurt tourism in his state.

* * *

He told The Associated Press the oil spill could be disastrous for Mississippi's coastal economy. Then he added: "But it's just as possible that what happens here will be manageable and of moderate and even minimal impact."

Oil has not started washing up on shore in any large quantities, and Barbour likened much of the spill to the gasoline sheen commonly found around ski boats. "We don't wash our face in it, but it doesn't stop us from jumping off the boat to ski," Barbour said.

as BP will be be able to write $7B off there Federal taxes. Revenue that the Federal Government will loose.

and are a group of sociopaths

of the political gift of the Century-

Now that's impressive.

BP, out of the goodness of their hearts, gave 15 million to Barbour and 25 million to Jindal.

Wonder if that money could be found anywhere today?

Who make billions in ill gotten gains through legalized bribery in the American political system.

I'm not worried about their immediate income. Let them put aside enough. (I'm doubtful that 2b is enough), and if after that, they're income plummets... well, start selling off those assets, guys. Sorry, your income will be cut, execs.

truly there is no bottom to the bottomless pit of GOP shamefulness and hate

obama brokered a great deal here for louisiana and mississippi but barbour has to piss on it because, well, a black man and for sure a black democrat can do no right in his book

i'm getting really sick of the show boating

They're destroying their re-election chances with every blunder.