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Thread: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

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    Lightbulb BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    New oil spill ruling could cost BP a whopping US$17.6B

    BP was found to have acted with "gross negligence," leading to the worst-ever U.S. offshore oil spill. The ruling triggers the highest possible fines.

    NEW YORK—A judge’s ruling in the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill case could cost BP an additional $17.6 billion in fines.

    BP was found by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier to have acted with “gross negligence,” leading to the worst U.S. offshore oil spill. The ruling triggers the highest possible fines under the Clean Air Act of $4,300 per barrel of oil spilled.

    The number of barrels spilled is being debated but is likely to fall between 2.4 million and 4.1 million barrels. That translates to a fine of between $10.3 billion and $17.6 billion.

    While BP has already spent at least $24 billion in spill-related expenses to date, including cleanup costs and payments to affected businesses and residents, it had set aside just $3.5 billion to cover what it thought would be a much smaller fine for actually spilling the oil.

    BP said it would appeal the ruling, a process that puts off a final decision on the size of the fine and also likely delay other pending court cases concerning the spill.

    “It’s pretty severe,” said Justin Jenkins, an analyst at Raymond James, about the ruling. “And now there are even more unknowns about what the final number will be.”

    BP sold $38 billion in assets, including refineries and interests in oil and natural gas fields, to fund its initial oil spill expenses and it is in the midst of a program to sell another $10 billion worth of assets by next year.

    The new fines may require yet more asset sales, analysts said, though BP could also begin reserving money for the fine even as it appeals the decision. The company remains very profitable. Last year BP earned $24 billion on sales of $379 billion.

    ------------------------

    Does throwing money at the disaster fix it? Sadly, NO. That is a hand slap, a cut into profits. Does it address the ecological disaster? Sadly no. Does it address the loss of lives, sadly no.

    The saga continues ...

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    UK Avalon Member avid's Avatar
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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    Are they still spraying Corexit?
    The love you withhold is the pain that you carry
    and er..
    "Chariots of the Globs" (apols to Fat Freddy's Cat)

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    Hmm, EPA whistleblower says Corexit isn't really safe..

    EPA and BP says safe as icecream (but UK has a COREXIT ban from being used in UK - guess UK isn't into using propylene glycol in icecream eh?)

    BP refines it to say, well, safe as dish-soap..

    The "decision" to use a banned dispersant (banned in UK, to be used in US waters by a UK oil company, BP..) comes from an EPA and BP discussion about which are the least toxic.. The amount of long term studies didn't exist.

    The decision was to make it go out of sight out of mind "instantly" as close as possible so that it would not clump, and reach land. Make it disperse was the logic by BP and EPA.

    HOWEVER lots of "dispersed" oil made it to land, and made it to the ocean floor.

    Supposedly the use of the stuff was stopped in 2010.. both EPA and BP saying the stuff is gone in 2 days to maybe 10 days tops..

    However, the label on the can of COREXIT defines a shelf life of infinite, indefinite, while it is sealed from the environment - the key word is sealed..

    So is "gone" in 2-10 days meaning, the stuff pushes the oil (and itself) so far apart with a renewed water supply, that its concentration continues to reduce? OR does it mean that the OIL and the COREXIT substance degrade into the basic raw materials making up the molecular complex.. ? (INSUFFICIENT DATA is the results of the reports).

    Some reports say the basic toxic substances that make up the corexit can be broken apart by light.

    At 5000 foot depth there is hardly any light to break it up.

    What about dead zones, or clumping zones where the material of oil + dispersant have congregated over time? (Other forum posts have defined these dead-zones in size), and other researchers have actually monitored and taken samples out of these dead-zones..

    IF the oil/dispersant mixture is deep in the sea, obviously it is not then going to "evaporate" any more than the small amount of normal evaporation which happens at the sea surface from agitation and solar irradiation (at the surface).

    That leaves a 300-5000 foot thick column of 2 million gallons of Corexit mixed in with about 200,000,000 gallons of crude oil. That column then has to be broken up and spread out all through the circulating currents of the Gulf of Mexico.. A "dead zone" forms when a circulating current, or whirlpool like zone is created (created by the land features of Louisiana and Florida, and weather and other circulating currents)..

    Shown on this map one can see where the dead zones, or whirlpools form and where the loop current would pull out of the gulf contaminants which reach it.


    In this map after the disaster, one can see where the eddie/whirlpools were forming..

    The action of a cyclonic whirlpool tends to be a concentrator, where heavy particles WILL drop out from the outer edges of the cyclonic barrier periphery to the center.. In other words, dispersed particles are concentrated to DROP OUT at the middle of the vortex cone. Hydro-concentrators and waste water solids/liquid separators do this all the time. It is used in the metals industry to separate out "fines" from gold sluices even.. This is a WELL known concept for those in the industry.

    Anyway, here is what a cyclonic concentrator looks like schematically:


    Here is where it gets interesting... If we assume that actually the "disperse oil and corexit" when they enter the whirlpools are actually CONCENTRATED, the material SHOULD then congeal, form tarballs, and potentially either be pushed to the ocean bottom with the downward flow, or potentially float to the surface to drift back onto land due to wind action. In either way, the disaster would NOT be over..

    IF then the tarballs reach shore, they can be buried (with the corexit within) and virtually sealed as a toxic lethal "hydrocarbon-bomb" figuratively speaking, a time-bomb which would, having been created and buried, seeps back to the surface..

    Tarballs are being found.

    Recent links to such: http://www.chron.com/news/health/art...th-4977264.php


    Tarballs found containing flesh eating bacteria.. The corexit solvent/dispersant allows for OIL to be absorbed into organic tissues, very much how like DMSO acts like a transfer agent to move molecules across skin, so does COREXIT.

    "One researcher who studies Vibrio vulnificus found it highly concentrated in tar balls that appeared along the Gulf Coast after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

    "Covadonga Arias, a professor of microbial genomics at Auburn University in Alabama, found that Vibrio vulnificus was 10 times higher in tar balls than in sand and up to 10 times higher than in seawater." (Source)

    TARMAT - much bigger than a "tar-ball" - http://blog.nwf.org/2013/06/40000-po...l-is-not-over/

    40,000-Pound Tar Mat Reminds Us the Oil Spill is Not Over - 6/27/2013 - " 165-foot by 65-foot tar mat has been found in shallow water off a Louisiana barrier island beach. While the tar mat is ‘only’ 15 percent oil and 85 percent sand, shells and water, the entire 40,000-pound mat is considered hazardous.."

    Is Corexit still being used, well not by official statements, but that does not mean corexit is not STILL resurfacing in one form or another in the environment as well as the OIL resurfacing, and being churned back into the environment..

    Links for more information -

    EPA - http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress...0!opendocument

    WhistleBlower on the EPA situation and Corexit - http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/2...cy_of_covering

    CNN article - EPA and the dispersant Corexit - http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/30/gul...ants/?hpt=Sbin








    Quote Posted by avid (here)
    Are they still spraying Corexit?
    Last edited by Bob; 6th September 2014 at 00:28.

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    I remember reading that BP is dumping excess Corexit in the Great Barrier Reef. Any of our Aussie members remember reading this? It was knocking around the alternative press some time ago.

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    Amount of time it takes to count up to a million:
    12 days
    Amount of time it takes to count up to a billion:
    32 years

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    BP tried to escape the penalties (once again) - January 12th, 2015

    NEW ORLEANS - A federal appeals court has refused to reconsider its 2014 ruling that BP cannot avoid federal penalties for the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill by blaming another company's failed equipment.

    The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals voted 7-6 against a rehearing. The court released its ruling Friday.

    "BP was majority owner of the Macondo well, where the leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.

    "BP and minority partner Anadarko had argued they should not face federal Clean Water Act penalties because the oil leaked not directly from the well but from the broken underwater riser that had connected the well to the rig owned by Transocean Ltd. A district judge and the appeals court disagreed.

    "A trial is set for later this month to determine Clean Water Act penalties. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier already has found that the oil giant acted with "gross negligence'' in the tragedy, a ruling that could mean some $18 billion in Clean Water Act penalties.

    "Other factors include disputed estimates of how much oil spewed into the Gulf before the Macondo well was capped."

    Quote The 5th Circuit's first ruling in June 2014 concluded that the well fit the definition of what the act calls a ''facility from which oil or a hazardous substance is discharged,'' and that it was "immaterial that the oil flowed through parts of the vessel before entering the Gulf of Mexico.''
    It seems to be that BP had been trying to say the "well" was not leaking, (trying to escape blame), but that the RISER/BLOWOUT PREVENTOR (attachments) to the WELL was leaking, had failed, not made by BP (but another company), that they simply owned the WELL, not the RISER/Blowout Preventor, and therefore should not be culpable for damages..

    The Judge(s) disagreed with BP's 'logic'.

    (Source)

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    A federal judge in the US state of Louisiana has granted final approval to an estimated US$ 20 billion settlement over the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resolving years of litigation over what caused one of the biggest ever environmental disasters.

    The settlement, first announced in July last year, includes US$ 5.5 billion in civil Clean Water Act penalties and billions more to cover environmental damage and other claims by the five US states along the Gulf coast, including Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida and Louisiana.

    The money is to be paid out over roughly 16 years for what has been called the biggest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry.

    The US Justice Department has estimated that the settlement will cost the oil giant as much as US$ 20.8 billion dollars, the largest environmental settlement in US history as well as the largest ever civil settlement with a single entity.

    US District Judge Carl Barbier, who approved the settlement, had set the stage with an earlier ruling that BP had been "grossly negligent" in the offshore rig explosion which killed 11 workers and caused a 134-million-gallon spill.

    from Al Jazeera news updates

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    Default Re: BP to be fined an additional 17.6 Billion Dollars for the Disaster

    Another way of feeding 'fines revenue', into the bank accounts of the Corrupt Corporate Courts, and TPTB... ?

    Fines mean nothing to the corporations, since it is fed-back into the loop, before disappearing along with all the other trillions...

    ( Wonder what the grand total, now is after 2-3 hundred years of 'currency, and a thousand years of Gold, Emeralds, and minerals.... )

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