captainsblog | BP rising so high it's blowing off the cuff

I am definitely in the wrong line of work.

If I fuck up at my job, three things can happen, all of them bad. I can lose money, I can lose clients, and in a really bad situation I can face legal consequences ranging from suits against me to outright disbarment.

On the other hand, if I'm British Petroleum and I fuck up in my maintenance of the only pipeline running from Alaska's Prudhoe Bay to the mainland, let's see what happens.

I don't lose money; I make it. Lots of it. My second-quarter profits- you know, what you have left after paying your expenses, like, frinstance, MAINTENANCE OF EQUIPMENT- were in excess of 7 billion USD and 30 percent higher than they were in 2005. And now thanks to my incompetence, the value of my remaining supplies is being bid up the wazoo and I'm going to make more money off my incompetence in the third quarter.

I won't lose any customers, either. There's no competition at either the distribution level- see the part above about mine being the only pipeline- or the refinery level. And for all the maniacal movement to open whole new sections of Alaska for drilling and exploration, I haven't heard any Republicans advocating running some additional pipes to the fields we already have, or requiring their multibillionaire owners to maintain the things so this won't happen.

Best of all, I don't face any meaningful government consequences for my inattentiveness. Quite the contrary. Our beloved President, himself experienced in the fucking-up of an oil company, is apparently leaning toward opening the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cover the "missing" oil from this disaster. Something he wasn't willing to do a year ago this time when Katrina took an even larger percentage of supply off-line. You don't suppose that's because this is three months before a Congressional election, do ya?

So by spilling more oil on the North Slope than even the Exxon Valdez did and now cutting off the remaining access to that crude at the height of the price cycle, BP has instantly increased the value of what oil still remains, with no threat of competition and help, rather than punishment, from our government.

Pass me that crowbar. I think I'll rip open a gas main and see if they'll bail me out before I blow myself up.

ETA. This article, which I came across in my travels last week, gives an excellent explanation of the anti-competitive principles governing the various levels of Big Oil. It also provides an essential comeback to those who oppose putting a windfall profits tax on these billions in "found money" going into the oilmens' pockets. You can't do that!, cry the conservatives, because it'll discourage investment and creation of new supply. Bullshit. The industry has already made the decision not to invest or create supply on its own:

Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, blames high gas prices on high oil prices "which are frankly out of our control", not decisions by refiners to hold back on gas. But he also says, "There is no law that says you can make people in an industry invest and expand capacity."

No, there isn't. But that doesn't mean there won't be once we take this country back.