Boycott BP (Page 4)

pitt83 - 2010-06-15 8:02 AM  If the station owner decides to align himself with BP, then they didn't perform due diligence vetting the business practices of his parent company.

 True that no one predicts this type of catastrophe and which oil company falls victim to it....

jsiegs - 2010-06-15 8:06 AM From NPR this morning, sales at BP stations are down 20% in Maryland.  To quote a local BP owner who is locked into his contracts (and I'm paraphrasing here because I don't remember exactly) "You're not hurting BP, you're hurting my family".  While this is a good sound bite and plays well to the media, its not my reason for not boycotting BP.

All I still see are emotional, and in my opinion misguided, responses to the disaster.  No one is claiming it isn't horrible or that you shouldn't be outraged that this happened.  I just think you should be mad with offshore drilling in general and not BP, cause it doesn't seem like they did anything so egregious.  Nothing worse than standard, legal, industry practice, so how can you really blame them for that?  If this bothers you so much, stop all offshore drilling, don't just stop BP.  I just haven't seen a good logical argument for a boycott of BP.

That being said, I'm cool with boycotts, what better way to influence a market absent sufficient government regulations than to force change through consumer demand?  However, I live because I can drive my car to work, is there a "good" oil company that meets my requirements of not drilling offshore (anywhere) and is making a significant effort towards alternative energy sources?  I don't think so, so what can I do?  (If there is, let me know - I have changed my consumer habits to support companies who take REAL green initiatives, and would change gas buying too).  I hope for government mandates to drive this since consumers aren't able to demand it.  By the time we're willing/able to demand it, I think it will be too late.

gearboy - 2010-06-14 7:19 AM

Sooooo - Bernie Madoff shouldn't have been jailed.  If we let him remain free, he might have been able to find a way to repay the victims of his misdeeds, right?

If the issue is financial, and you want to take a logical approach that also punishes people, then you would want to jail those who decided NOT to install safety cutoffs at the time the well was being drilled (I understand that there was a half million dollar piece of equipment that could have cut off the pipe as soon as there was a problem, but it was felt to be too expensive for the perceived risk/benefit ratio), going however high up the chain that goes.  Then you would break the company up into its assets and sell them off to the highest bidders (you don't think BP's competitors aren't already licking their chops at the prospect of taking them over?), with the resititution claims getting first dibs on the proceeds. 

And isn't that essentially how the free market is supposed to work?  The company that does the best job of delivering its goods and services without p!ssing people off and being the most cost effective gets the largest market share?  If people don't like the way BP does business, shouldn't they be voting with their dollars?

Maybe when the MMS hands out contracts, they should be requiring companies to put into escrow a suitable amount to cover this sort of problem, until the well is capped.  Then, even if the company goes under, for any reason, the coverage is in place.

TriRSquared - 2010-06-14 8:29 AM

I'm not sure where you heard this but there was a BOP (blow out preventer) installed, however it malfunctioned.  And they cost about $1/2 million.

I'm not saying there was not an issue with the installation or maybe shortcuts were taken but it is standard procedure to install a BOP when drilling a well to prevent this very problem.

So someone screwed up (BP, TransOcean, the BOP manufacturer?) but the device was in place.  The oil is shooting out of the top of the BOP currently.

pitt83 - 2010-06-14 3:06 PM  Common accounting trick. If you lease property, plant and equipment, it doesn't show as a liability on your balance sheet thereby inflating your cash flow. See any large capital item (airplanes, all CVS stores, etc) for equivalent accounting.

blairrob - 2010-06-15 11:43 PM



I'm missing something here. The lease payments would be deducted as a cash expense just as loan payments would, thus decreasing cash flow as lease payments are typically higher than loan payments. At worst, it would be a wash.  Please correct me if I'm wrong.

pitt83 - 2010-06-16 7:23 AM Hmm, now you're making me think. Bad blairrob!