Wednesday, June 16, 2010

BP Agree's to $20 Billion Shakedown

I have never seen the hubris of an administration that can impel a foreign company to put aside $20 billion dollars without any sort of court order.

President Barack Obama and BP reached agreement Wednesday on a $20 billion fund to compensate victims of the disastrous oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, and the giant British company's chairman apologized to America for the worst spill in U.S. history.

BP is suspending its dividends to shareholders to help pay for the costs, said chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg.

Obama announced the agreement after a four-hour meeting with BP officials. He also said the company had agreed to set up a separate $100 million fund to compensate oil rig workers laid off as a result of his six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling.

That first line has Obama talking like a dictator and he is lucky that BP is playing ball. I think they might have a legal recourse to get out of this coercion. Also the idea of making BP pay for the salaries of their competitors who have been put out of work by the White House is ludicrous. Also no talk of suspending the Jones Act so we can get some state-of the art Swedish and Danish oil skimmers out there.

No comments: