"BP admits failing"

[JackLuis]

...to use industry risk test at any of its deepwater wells in the US ."

BP was facing fresh criticism over its approach to safety on Saturday night after critics said it did not use an industry standard process to asses risk ahead of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Telegraph
By Rowena Mason
Published: 8:55PM BST 03 Jul 2010

Obama, "Did I say 20 Billion, Tony, or was it, 200?"

 

[JackLuis]

Is BP selling out?

"
BP oil spill: oil giant explores Middle East investment to fend off rivals
A Barclays Bank-style rescue is being discussed by BP with Middle East investors to strengthen its defences against opportunistic bids as it reaches another crucial stage in efforts to contain the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster."

Sounds like they need a bit of capital? But Arabs?

Well I guess it could be worse.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Democrats are burying BP bailouts within spending bills.

 

[JackLuis]

Democrats are burying BP bailouts within spending bills.

Naw they'er lining their Pockets.

 

[trysail]

These Greenpeace folks are some serious dumbfucks.


Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.



British oil company BP says it will continue to finance sponsorships of art institutions, including the Tate Britain and the British Museum. This despite the activities of protesters who have tried to call attention to BP's handling of the Gulf spill disaster by smearing the Tate's main hall with a feather-covered slick.


RENEE MONTAGNE, host: In Great Britain, artists and environmental activists have already begun what they say will be a summer of protests against BP. They will be showing up outside the many cultural institutions that take sponsorship money from BP. Protestors say places like the Tate Gallery and the Royal Opera House stain their reputations by being associated with the company responsible for the Gulf Oil spill. The institutions say it's complicated. Vicki Barker reports from London.


VICKI BARKER: Black clad, black masked protestors filling buckets of gooey black oil outside the Tate Gallery last week, blocking the path of the grandes(ph) and corporate worthies arriving for a summer party celebrating 20 years of BP sponsorship.

All of the buckets adorned with BP's bright green sunflower logo. In May, protestors released dead fish tied to black helium balloons in the Tate Modern's Vast Turbine Hall. Museum staff had to shoot the balloons down with air rifles.

Like Royal Dutch Shell's red and yellow seashell, the BP sunflower is a subliminal presence in the brochures and signage of some of Britain's most cherished cultural institutions. Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace says that's just the point.


Mr. CHARLIE KRONICK (Greenpeace): What their sponsorship for institutions like the Tate, the Natural Portrait Gallery gives them is a, you know, to use the jargon, a social license to operate. It's a fantastic smoke screen to high behind when they're being criticized for the real problems with their core business.


BARKER: BP doesn't reveal how much it donates to the arts here and the institutions themselves aren't saying. But BP and Shell are believed to be the most generous corporate donors on the British cultural scene.

They filled a funding gap created in the 1990s, when public indignation and tough new laws forced the big tobacco companies to pull their sponsorships. The activists say it's time to harness the same revulsion against big oil's largesse.

Not so fast, says Sir Christopher Frayling.


Sir CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING (Royal Academy of Arts): Well, now is not the time to get particularly squeamish about sponsorship.


BARKER: Frayling is rector of the Royal Academy of the Arts, an institution he's trying to pilot through some of the choppiest waters in modern memory. Britain's new conservative-led government has ordered 25 percent across-the-board cuts to all but the most essential programs. The country's heavily subsidized arts institutions are staring disaster in the face.


Sir FRAYLING: If you take away that kind of corporate sponsorship - and my god, it's difficult to get at the moment - if you take that away it would actually decimate the arts in some respects.


BARKER: The Tate, Royal Opera House, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery have issued a joint communique defending their connection with BP. For its part, BP says everyone has a right to protest. But in a statement, the company says it's saddened by the protests. We're doing the best we can to deal with a difficult situation, it says. BP also says it's unaware of any arts institutions in the U.K. or the U.S. pulling out of sponsorship deals.

The controversy has divided Britain's art community. Those pushing for a boycott of BP sponsorships argue Britain's arts and cultural institutions are demeaning themselves by lending a little of their cache to the embattled oil giant.

The opposing argument was most pungently summed up by Jonathan Jones, art critic for the liberal guardian newspaper. If, in these perilous times, Britain's museums and galleries can get money from Satan, himself, he wrote, they should take it.

For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London.



http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128313424

 

[JackLuis]

The BP/Government police state

WTF!?

"Last week, I interviewed Mother Jones' Mac McClelland, who has been covering the BP oil spill in the Gulf since the first day it happened. She detailed how local police and federal officials work with BP to harass, impede, interrogate and even detain journalists..."

I haven't seen many in depth pieces on the impact on the Gulf coast. Most of what I have seen earlier (~week 2-4?) were the same shots of one pelican and a few other birds shots, over and over.

Has ABC, CBS,etc. had much more that a few dead birds shots between commercials? I don't watch much TV.


I can see restricting close approach to booms and boats, We wouldn't want the media to interfere and make the situation any worse, but Why not schedule a daily fly by of the coast with four cameras from a pool of papers, Networks and such Share the footage and get a record of the accomplishments of the previous day?

If the locals are acting as BP watchdogs then there should be some changes made. BP should pay the bills, and be looking over their own shoulder.

 

[TE999]

These Greenpeace folks are some serious dumbfucks.


Copyright © 2010 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.



British oil company BP says it will continue to finance sponsorships of art institutions, including the Tate Britain and the British Museum. This despite the activities of protesters who have tried to call attention to BP's handling of the Gulf spill disaster by smearing the Tate's main hall with a feather-covered slick.


RENEE MONTAGNE, host: In Great Britain, artists and environmental activists have already begun what they say will be a summer of protests against BP. They will be showing up outside the many cultural institutions that take sponsorship money from BP. Protestors say places like the Tate Gallery and the Royal Opera House stain their reputations by being associated with the company responsible for the Gulf Oil spill. The institutions say it's complicated. Vicki Barker reports from London.


VICKI BARKER: Black clad, black masked protestors filling buckets of gooey black oil outside the Tate Gallery last week, blocking the path of the grandes(ph) and corporate worthies arriving for a summer party celebrating 20 years of BP sponsorship.

All of the buckets adorned with BP's bright green sunflower logo. In May, protestors released dead fish tied to black helium balloons in the Tate Modern's Vast Turbine Hall. Museum staff had to shoot the balloons down with air rifles.

Like Royal Dutch Shell's red and yellow seashell, the BP sunflower is a subliminal presence in the brochures and signage of some of Britain's most cherished cultural institutions. Charlie Kronick of Greenpeace says that's just the point.


Mr. CHARLIE KRONICK (Greenpeace): What their sponsorship for institutions like the Tate, the Natural Portrait Gallery gives them is a, you know, to use the jargon, a social license to operate. It's a fantastic smoke screen to high behind when they're being criticized for the real problems with their core business.


BARKER: BP doesn't reveal how much it donates to the arts here and the institutions themselves aren't saying. But BP and Shell are believed to be the most generous corporate donors on the British cultural scene.

They filled a funding gap created in the 1990s, when public indignation and tough new laws forced the big tobacco companies to pull their sponsorships. The activists say it's time to harness the same revulsion against big oil's largesse.

Not so fast, says Sir Christopher Frayling.


Sir CHRISTOPHER FRAYLING (Royal Academy of Arts): Well, now is not the time to get particularly squeamish about sponsorship.


BARKER: Frayling is rector of the Royal Academy of the Arts, an institution he's trying to pilot through some of the choppiest waters in modern memory. Britain's new conservative-led government has ordered 25 percent across-the-board cuts to all but the most essential programs. The country's heavily subsidized arts institutions are staring disaster in the face.


Sir FRAYLING: If you take away that kind of corporate sponsorship - and my god, it's difficult to get at the moment - if you take that away it would actually decimate the arts in some respects.


BARKER: The Tate, Royal Opera House, British Museum and National Portrait Gallery have issued a joint communique defending their connection with BP. For its part, BP says everyone has a right to protest. But in a statement, the company says it's saddened by the protests. We're doing the best we can to deal with a difficult situation, it says. BP also says it's unaware of any arts institutions in the U.K. or the U.S. pulling out of sponsorship deals.

The controversy has divided Britain's art community. Those pushing for a boycott of BP sponsorships argue Britain's arts and cultural institutions are demeaning themselves by lending a little of their cache to the embattled oil giant.

The opposing argument was most pungently summed up by Jonathan Jones, art critic for the liberal guardian newspaper. If, in these perilous times, Britain's museums and galleries can get money from Satan, himself, he wrote, they should take it.

For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London.



http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128313424

These are the same bird and bunny nuts who, for some unknown reason, have Congress and the Senate by the shorties when it comes to drilling on US lands, supplying water to farms, damming rivers for hydroelectric power (Hello! No nasty hydrocarbons) or blocking virtually all human progress. No damn wonder BP's drilling a mile down.

There are several other little nuggets of information in this piece which are too good to pass up. I've highlighted them.

So it's the Artsy-Fartsy crowd vs. Greenpeace, is it? And it's all about that nasty money that 'true' artists disdain; it's all about creativity, not crass materialism, you Philistines!

Now that the UK's feeling the fiscal pinch, the Art community's feeling it too...which raises the question why are the Arts subsidized by public funds anyway? They seem to be receiving corporate monies as well (Oh, the horror) and it still isn't enough.

Unfortunately the definition of 'Art' has been distorted to mean such idiocy as smearing oneself with feces and reciting feminist poetry, dissecting farm animals and encasing them in plastic, putting trash on a dais and giving it some lofty title, throwing buckets of paint at a canvas and rolling on the floor mouthing obscenities.

We need to subsidize this dreck?

[We now return you to your regular oil spill discussion]

 

[amicus]

Unfortunately the definition of 'Art' has been distorted to mean such idiocy as smearing oneself with feces and reciting feminist poetry, dissecting farm animals and encasing them in plastic, putting trash on a dais and giving it some lofty title, throwing buckets of paint at a canvas and rolling on the floor mouthing obscenities.

We need to subsidize this dreck?

~~~

Well put, Tom...I will not even attempt to add to it, merely applaud you for a clear and concise statement.

Amicus

 

[TE999]

~~~

Well put, Tom...I will not even attempt to add to it, merely applaud you for a clear and concise statement.

Amicus

Thanks, ami. Being a part of and appreciating the Arts, it annoys me no end to see this sort of nonsense put in the same category as writing, painting, sculpture, poetry, dance and photography. 'Performance Art' indeed.

 

[Handley_Page]

Whoever wrote it could not have been English:-

Sir FRAYLING: If you take away that kind of corporate sponsorship - and my God, it's difficult to get at the moment - if you take that away it would actually decimate the arts in some respects.


It should be "Sir Christopher".

And I agree about "Art", although I think the Tate is getting the message that Heaven-only-knows how much they paid for the unmade bed and similar 'exhibits is a ghastly waste of money.

 

[trysail]

Ready! Fire! Aim!




BP Retailers See Little Help From Aid Plan as Spill Cuts Sales
By Leslie Patton

July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Owners of BP-brand gasoline stations may receive little or no help from a $60 million aid package as they try to cope with a sales slowdown that intensified after failures in May to end a record U.S. oil spill.

BP Plc is leaving it to distributors to dole out the aid, including reduced credit-card fees and fuel rebates of one cent a gallon, to help make up for consumer backlash over the Gulf of Mexico spill, company spokesman Scott Dean said.

“Giving the money to the distributors is not doing anything for us,” said Lori Reid, who has owned one BP station in Topeka, Kansas, for six years. “That is one thing that really upsets me about how BP is handling this.”

Frustration mounts as the entrepreneurs who own more than 95 percent of BP’s 11,500 U.S. filling stations lose sales to angry consumers who have no way to punish the London-based oil producer directly. Bob Juckniess said sales declines at his 10 Chicago-area stations worsened to 20 percent in June, after BP failed in a so-called top-kill effort to plug its leaking well.

Most U.S. filling stations are owned by individuals rather than the major oil companies whose names they bear. About 80 percent of refined fuels in the U.S. are sold by the nation’s convenience stories. Of the almost 115,000 convenience outlets that sell gasoline, 57 percent have one-store owners, according to 2010 data from the National Association of Convenience Stores in Alexandria, Virginia.

BP, which said yesterday that it has spent $3.1 billion responding to the spill, generated net income of $67.5 million a day on revenue of $812 million a day in the first quarter.

Distributors Decide
The aid package, unveiled last week to distributors, equals about $5,200 per station. BP said relying on distributors will ensure the retailers hurting the most get the most help.

“My fear is that the money won’t flow down to the individual station owners,” Juckniess said in an interview at his station near Chicago’s Midway Airport. “When you’re talking about a penny a gallon, it’s not a whole heck of a lot.”

Two of the distributors Juckniess deals with have agreed to give him the one-cent incentive. The third, Atlas Oil Co. of Taylor, Michigan, said it will instead help with capital projects at filling stations.

“It will be more longer-lasting at their sites, rather than, ‘Hey, here’s $1,000,’” said Michael Evans, executive vice president of business development at Atlas. “What we want to build is something long term.”

Boycotts
The spill began after an April 20 explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that killed 11 workers. BP’s leaking Macondo well is spewing as much as 60,000 barrels of oil a day into the ocean, according to a government estimate.

Campaigns to boycott BP retailers intensified in June, after several efforts to stanch the flow failed in May, station owners said. The company is drilling a relief well, scheduled for completion in August, to intercept and plug Macondo.

“The greatest impact has been over the last month because people thought it was going to get plugged,” said John Phelps, president of Carroll Independent Fuel Co., a Baltimore-based distributor.

People have written “stop the leak” on pumps in permanent marker and taped up pictures of dead turtles at BP stations, Phelps said. He said fewer than 20 of the 105 BP stations to which he distributes fuel have seen sales drop.

“People are separating us from the tragedy down in the Gulf,” Phelps said.

Sales Drop 30%
Dean, the BP spokesman, said the spill’s impact has varied by location and customer type. For instance, boycotts have hurt sales most in the Gulf Coast region, he said. Stations on highways with other brands around them have lost more sales than outlets where customers know the local owners, he said.

Stanley Roberts, president of fuel distributor Capital Oil Inc. in Jackson, Mississippi, said Gulf Coast retailers are “being hammered” as the spill also keeps tourists away. He said he heard sales at some coastal stations are down as much as 30 percent from last year.

Station owners said BP rebates to consumers of five to 10 cents a gallon might help win back customers. P. Noble, a Stickney, Illinois, resident who was buying fuel at a BP station in Chicago, said such savings wouldn’t engender loyalty.

“It’s not even the prices,” Noble said. “I’m more socially and consciously involved in what’s going in our community and our world. It’s just terrible right now what’s going on.”


http://noir.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601110&sid=a7krWRqVbR48

 

[JackLuis]

Well this will be a BIG help!

"US Navy airship en route to assist Gulf oil recovery"

5000 feet down and we get help from a Blimp!

"Recovery effort falls vastly short of BP's promises"

In the 77 days since oil from the ruptured Deepwater Horizon began to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has skimmed or burned about 60 percent of the amount it promised regulators it could remove in a single day.

"Gulf Oil Spill: Scientists Beg For A Chance To Take Basic Measurements"

Federal estimates of the flow have over time gone from laughably low to laughably imprecise to just plain unpersuasive. And it took more than a month for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to take the marine science community's concerns seriously enough to embark on substantive missions to explore the potentially vast amounts of oil that are lurking beneath the surface with possibly long-term and devastating effects.

Wow over forty-five words in ONE sentence!

So the Government is not telling us the whole truth? "I'm Shocked!"
BP is a prevarication expert and looking for Arabs to help with their cash flow?
and the oil keeps on coming.

 

[JackLuis]

Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast

Facing the Future as a Media Felon on the Gulf Coast

That seems a little steep. $40 Grand and a class D felony ?
Or is there another explanation?

Restrictions of the press, in America?

Restraint of journalism?

Or reasonable restrictions enforced. 20 meters is very wise considering the booms are supposed to be oily.

Ultra light aircraft is the way to get the picture, without interfering with "cleanup"..