President Obama to demand BP escrow account

[cal04]

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38461.html

President Barack Obama plans to use a meeting with BP executives this week to demand that they create and fund an escrow account and accept an independent panel to handle damage claims by individuals and businesses hurt by the Gulf disaster, a White House official told POLITICO.

Obama wants BP to set aside funds to pay damage claims, to be “paid out under fair, efficient, and transparent procedures administered by an independent third-party panel established just for this purpose,” the official said.

The announcement is the latest effort by the White House to be sure BP, not taxpayers, wind up with the bulk of the bill from the nation’s worst environmental calamity.

The White House has become exasperated with BP’s handling of claims, which the administration says has been slow and clumsy.

[marylanddem]

1. Do we have any real leverage here?

I have a sickening feeling that no matter how "demanding" etc Obama & the Coast Guard are, there is no real leverage with BP...They can declare bankruptcy & walk away, right?

[KharmaTrain]

4. Not Walk As Much As Delay

Unfortunately, thanks to deregulation, the government gave away a lot of leverage in this situation. There's two games going on here...the fix and the liability. The liability game will play out for years...and by design. We're already seeing it with the dispute over the oil being discharged. This is sure to end up in a court and it'll take months to determine a "working number" to procede with. Then comes determining the extent of the damages in clean up costs and then restitution for the fisherman and others affected along the coast. This will go on for years...not a dime being paid while litigation is underway. Even if some BP funds are frozen, they have plenty stashed elsewhere...the money will continue to roll. By the time they settle, it will have little effect on their bottom line and those who suffered the most will have to fend for themselves until a settlement is reached (if they can hang on that long).

I'm not too hot on the Escrow idea as that money would be the first to be frozen the moment a lawsuit is filed. But there isn't much else to offer...other than to trust BP to pay costs now and settle the differences later...and I'm not holding my breath for that. We'll be on the hook for the clean-up, multinationals like BP will dance their way out of this mess...maybe come up with a new name and back to the same old same old. They know we're addicted to oil and that's the ultimate leverage.

[dixiegrrrrl]

17. You said it perfectly.

Buying time is what it is all about.

[BR_Parkway]

11. We can cancel the leases and hand them to someone else - an oil

companies value is based a lot on the reserves of oil that they have legally under their control

[Lochloosa]

12. How about cancel the leases and NOT hand them to someone else.

[BR_Parkway]

18. I'd like that - but the reality is that, with no "manhattan project" in place

to get us off this type of energy, we're going to be stuck with it for some time.

Even if we had the technology today to replace everything, we'd still need a couple of years to get everything installed

[Lochloosa]

19. I agree. But, the Gulf only contains 2% of the worlds oil supply.

Do we really need it?

[dipsydoodle]

2. an independent panel

by definition would have to be non American. I'm guessing it would need to be one of the large auditing firms given the amounts involved.

Presumably this would also require input from the other parties : Anadarko Petroleum, Japan Mitsui , Halliburton and Transocean.

[Mimosa]

3. Alright! Way to go.

This will make the British press angry. The same people who editorialised that we needed to elect Obama to save the world have been attacking Obama groundlessly in their papers. :(

[dipsydoodle]

5. Got some links ?

.

[jtrockville]

15. Here's one, not regarding the press, but regarding British politicians:

...snip...

Mr Obama has said he would have fired BP's top executive Tony Hayward if he were in charge of the company and has supported the idea that it suspend its quarterly dividend for shareholders.

...snip...

Mr Obama's comments had led to angry reactions from some UK politicians.

Former Conservative Party chairman Lord Tebbit accused him of giving a "xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance against a multinational company".

London Mayor Boris Johnson said there was "something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America".

From the business world, Miles Templeman, director general of the Institute of Directors, said some of the language being used by the Obama administration was "inappropriate".

And Richard Lambert, director of the CBI employers' group, called the rhetoric a "matter of concern".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/politics/10303619.stm

[dipsydoodle]

16. I think those comments

were to do with the statements in the media your side which implied BP was a UK company simply because its registered here. Had also not been helped by use of its old name British Petroleum which was changed when it merged with Amoco and became an Anglo American company.

[madokie]

6. I sure would like to read this from another link

I trust politico about as much as I do the snake cheney

[blondeatlast]

8. +1. nt

[izquierdista]

7. Typical lawyer worthlessness

All lawyers know how to do is haggle about the bills and the blame long after the fact. The only thing their heads are good for during an emergency are as hat racks.

Here's what should have been done from day 1:

(1) Channel the oil to the surface. Some sort of curtain of air bubbles, or material deployed on long anchor chains, anything to try to conduct the leaking oil to the surface where, (2) it could be sucked up by any seaworthy tanker that could convey it to some tank farm in Louisiana until they figure out how to process it. The hope would be that they might capture 85% of the oil like the Saudis claim they did in a Persian Gulf blowout.

(3) For oil that escaped the collection attempts, have a flotilla of boats outside the collection perimeter pumping air into the water. Lots of air. It takes about 15 cubic feet of air to metabolize one ounce of crude oil to carbon dioxide, and the bacteria that do that can't hold their breath for very long.

(4) The third ring of defense against the gusher would be the judicious application of detergent (NOT the polluting "dispersant" that has been sprayed everywhere). A third ring of vessels would be where booms and burning and detergent would be applied to visible oil escaping from the first two.

I think if Herbert Hoover was President, we might have a better response. He was an engineer, not a lawyer (although he did have that Republican stage fright about the government actually doing something).

[BeFree]

13. Ok smart ass

... if that is such a good idea - this ringing and skimming.

Why in the hell aren't they doing this? HUH?

From one smart ass to another, mind you.

[izquierdista]

14. That's what you get when lawyers are in charge

We don't have a representative government, we have a government of laws which, of course, the lawyers have appointed themselves to run. Yea, a few doctors participate, but for every Dr. Howard Dean, there seems to be a Dr. Bill Frist interested in the family business first. There aren't enough engineers and scientists at the top of the decision making process. Oh, did I forget about Stephen Chu and his Nobel Prize? He's just the exception that proves the rule -- a showpiece to look good but not listen to.

Why isn't BP doing it? I imagine they had lots of good advice from the engineers on scene -- the ones that were ordered to go against their better instincts because they were over budget and are now dead. But now BP needs advice from spill containment experts, biologists, oceanographers, marine scientists, etc., and those people aren't on their payroll. They have what all old, established companies have at the top -- lawyers and accountants. Weasels who got to the top on politicking, not because they had any technical smarts. And it really shows, for example, how they spray the dispersant from planes -- only an idiot with no chemistry knowledge would buy that sales pitch from the Corexit marketing people.

I'm probably not the only engineer that sent suggestions into the blackholes known as the White House e-mail server and the BP DeepHorizon Response website. But the people that call the shots there can't tell a good suggestion from "first we get a lot of teacups".

[cal04]

9. ABC, Axelrod: Obama Wants BP to Set up Escrow Account for Claims

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=10901013


(snip)
BP's board was to meet on Monday to discuss deferring its second-quarter dividend and putting the money into escrow until the company's liabilities from the spill are known.

"Our mission is to hold them accountable in every appropriate way," Axelrod said.


(snip)
The White House wants an independent, third party to administer the escrow account and compensate those with "legitimate" claims for damages, he said. The amount of money set aside will be part of the White House discussions, but Axelrod said it should be "substantial."

[jazzelle]

10. Good

time to get tough