BP's Big Spill

Hold your nose and buy BP

By Adam Sharp
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

British Petroleum (NYSE:BP) shares are off nearly 20% since their Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded April 21st. That's around $30b in market cap wiped out in 2 weeks.

From a cold-blooded investing perspective, this looks like a buying opportunity to me. I've seen clean-up cost estimates from $170m to $3.5b. It could go even higher as the class-actions roll in.

Straight talk about the spill's effects

Coast Guard to BP: Speed it up, stop the spill

By RAY HENRY

The Associated Press

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — The Coast Guard has demanded that BP step up its efforts to contain the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico by the end of the weekend, telling the British oil giant that its slow pace in stopping the spill is becoming increasingly alarming as the disaster fouled the coastline in ugly new ways Saturday. The dispute escalated on the same day that ominous new signs of the tragedy emerged on the beaches of Alabama. Waves of unsightly brown surf hit the shores in Orange Beach, leaving stinking, dark piles of oil that dried in the hot sun and extended up to 12 feet from the water's edge for as far as the eye could see.

Worldwide BP Protest Day vilifies BP for spill

Boycotts and protests against BP gas stations could hurt the wrong people. But public anger over the Gulf oil spill can no longer be contained, worsening the oil giant’s prospects for survival. Fifty-four days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the court of public opinion continues to turn against BP and its role in the worst ecological mess in US history: The April 20 Deepwater Horizon explosion and subsequent spill is emptying up to 40,000 barrels a day into the ecologically sensitive Gulf of Mexico.

The Christian Science Monitor
June 12, 2010

Time To Buy BP?

By Christopher Helman
Forbes.com
Daniel Pickering, head of research at Houston energy investment bank Tudor, Pickering, Holt & Co., has taken a thorough look at BP's financial reports, and in his daily research note this morning, he put forth a thoroughly convincing argument for why BP is far from a bankruptcy risk, and why it is very important for President Obama to appreciate that BP is a far more valuable cash cow alive than dead.

Mississippi governor says press coverage is more damaging than slick

"The truth is we have had virtually no oil," Mr Barbour said on Fox News Sunday. "We've had a few tar balls but we have a few every year" because of natural seepage in the Gulf of Mexico. "The biggest negative impact for us has been the news coverage," he added, saying that reports and footage gave the misleading impression that the entire coast from "Texas to Florida" was "knee deep in oil".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/f

Spill may have leaked 42M-100M gallons into Gulf

New poll shows support for use of renewable energy

By Charles Q. Choi

June 10, 2010

As the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico continues to wreak havoc, renewable energy may never have looked better. A new poll out of Stanford University, surveying 1,000 Americans between June 1 and June 7, found that while about three-fourths oppose new taxes on gas or electricity to force conservation, 84 percent favor the federal government offering tax breaks to encourage more wind, solar and water power.

Live Science

Cleaning Animals Largely Futile, Scientist Says

AP | JOHN FLESHER and NOAKI SCHWARTZ | June 10, 2010 at 05:02 PM

FORT JACKSON, La. — Rescuers gently washing the goo from pelicans make for some of the few hopeful images from the disaster on the Gulf of Mexico, yet some scientists contend those efforts are good for little more than warming hearts.

Critics call bird-washing a wasteful exercise in feel-good futility that simply buys doomed creatures a bit more time. They say the money and man-hours would be better spent restoring wildlife habitat or saving endangered species.

Opinion: Leaders Play Games While Oil Pours Into the Gulf

As a country, we seem to have lost the plot, with grandstanding, strategizing and even lying taking center stage while real problems threaten many of the core elements of our day-to-day lives. We don't realistically address the issues, but use them as opportunities to score political points. The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster is far from the only example, but it is the latest one.
From a jobs crisis to Afghanistan to Iran to oil taking over the Gulf of Mexico (and more), we have real problems in the United States that have to be addressed. But how can we solve anything when too many political leaders are more interested in seizing on these issues to score political points? As we fight these petty battles, the problems march on, unaddressed. Nero might have fiddled, but I doubt he denied the existence of the fire.
Huffington Post June 10, 2010

The Situation: June 7, 2010

New Estimates Double Rate of Oil Flow

The new calculation suggests that an amount of oil equivalent to the Exxon Valdez disaster could have been flowing into the Gulf of Mexico every 8 to 10 days.
New York Times June 10, 2010

If you're not depressed enough, listen to this... Plight For Pelicans: Oil Puts Nesting Season At Risk

It's the economy stupid: Global fallout from the big spill

Push for BP to Halt Dividends Hits Resistance in Britain

BP’s shares, which are widely held by pension funds here, dropped 7 percent in London on Thursday because of concerns about the costs for the oil cleanup. The shares have fallen more than 40 percent since the fatal explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in April, wiping more than £50 billion, or $73 billion, from the company’s market value.

New York Times 6/10/10

The real issue: How out of balance with the natural world are we?

There's nothing pat about what's going on in the Gulf. It's the most vivid sign we've yet had that we are running into the kind of limits that people started talking about way back at that first Earth Day. But its meaning risks disappearing beneath the endless stories about Top Hat and Junk Shot. BP's great victory will come if it need merely confess to technical overreach and pay a few billion in fines -- if that happens, it can get back to making serious money, and the planet can get back to burning.
Bill McKibben
Huffington Post

Media Blocked from Covering Spill News

Journalists struggling to document the impact of the oil rig explosion have repeatedly found themselves turned away from public areas affected by the spill, and not only by BP and its contractors, but by local law enforcement, the Coast Guard and government officials.

http://global.nytimes.com/

Our Dilemma--in Spades