Supposedly BP has already spennt over eight hundred million dollars and counting.

For that matter, there is an eight cent per barrel tax on oil to handle spills. It brings in something like four billion dollars per decade to pay for cases such as this. Looking at it that way, BP already paid for the spill before they did it, not that I imagine they prefered losing the petroleum and natural gas over selling it.

David considering governments of morons,
pointy haired industry bosses,
confusion over details

I was talking about Deepwater Horizon semisubmersible drilling rig. It was a ship. I had read that under an 1851 law there were limits on the owner’s liability. I looked it up since then and saw “Transocean, Doomed Rig’s Owner, Seeks to Limit Its Liability” Thursday 13 May 2010 by: Scott Hiaasen | Miami Herald
(Hmmmm, wonder if he is kin to Carl Hiaasen of the same paper. Highly unlikely he isn’t) “Transocean, Ltd., the Switzerland-based offshore contractor that owned the Deepwater Horizon floating drilling rig, has asked a federal court in Houston to limit its liability from the oil spill to less than $27 million. . . . . . Invoking a little-known maritime law passed in 1851, ,,, Before the accident, the Deepwater Horizon was valued at more than $500 million.”

Twenty seven million, seventy five million, when I run out of fingers and toes, they look similar to me.

I thought discussion was on that limitation. I looked further and saw what you are talking about in “Under the Oil Pollution Act or Opa, B-P has to pay for any environmental damage from the oil spill. But the law caps the company’s liability for damage to the tourism and fishing industries at seventy five million dollars. While in Washington B-P’s C-E-O Tony Hayward acknowledged the Opa‘s seventy five million dollar cap won’t cover all the economic damage. ”

So they aren’t limited to seventy five million dollars total liability, which never made sense considering how they spent way more than that already, they are saying we will never get more than that for damage to our tourism and fishing industries.

Under the Constitution, even if the limits were changed, the new law would only apply to new spills. I know our President has been known to try to ignore the ex post facto clause in the Constitution, but surely eventually SOMEBODY would mention it to him.

Be happy, it will be expensive to them just as it is to us.

David for shared misery

The impetus for approving the measure should be obvious — the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf keeps getting worse, and may soon no longer be limited to the Gulf. It’s hardly a good time for a politician to take a shameless stand to limit industry liability costs.

And yet, it keeps happening. Last week, it was Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Today, it was Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) stopped Democrats’ efforts on Tuesday of passing a measure to increase oil companies’ liability for accidents resulting from offshore drilling.

Inhofe objected to a unanimous consent request by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who took a second stab Tuesday at passing the bill in an expedited way.

Menendez and his partners on this intend to keep trying — and the DSCC intends to use Republican opposition as a campaign issue.

Are you prepared?

Why is the GOP still blocking an effort to raise the liability of damages on BP, which has a paultry $75 million cap??
Tomorrow I’m gonna call Miller’s office and ask how he would choose to use that $75M because I’m curious what his priorities are.