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BP’s federal penalty for the Gulf spill is final: $4 billion

by HartkePoundstone568 Posted on January 30, 2013

BP’s federal penalty for the Gulf spill is final: $4 billion

By Philip Bump

And that’s that. From CNN:

A federal judge in New Orleans Tuesday approved a $4 billion plea agreement for criminal fines and penalties against oil giant BP for the 2010 Gulf oil spill, the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.

U.S. District Court Judge Sarah Vance imposed the terms that the Justice Department and BP had agreed to last November, which include the oil company pleading guilty to 14 criminal counts — among them, felony manslaughter charges — and the payment of a record $4 billion in criminal penalties over five years.

Once you add in the $1.4 billion levied against Transocean, the total bill for polluting the Gulf of Mexico and killing 11 workers is $5.4 billion. Or, if you’re so inclined, $5.3 million a day since the explosion on April 20, 2010.

Over the same time period, including BP’s $17 billion loss at the time of the explosion, BP has earned $25.966 billion in profit. Meaning that it’s made $25.5 million in profit a day since the explosion. Take out the BP settlement, and that’s $21.57 million every day, from the day the Deepwater Horizon exploded until today, that BP has earned selling oil. That’s $898,000 an hour. About $250 a second, every second.

In other words — I think they’ll survive this “largest criminal penalty in U.S. history.”

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Almost half of all coal burned in the world is burned in China

by gerdi Posted on January 29, 2013

Almost half of all coal burned in the world is burned in China

By Philip Bump

Speaking of air pollution in China, here’s a disconcerting graph from the U.S. Energy Information Agency.

EIA

The EIA explains:

Coal consumption in China grew more than 9% in 2011, continuing its upward trend for the 12th consecutive year, according to newly released international data. China’s coal use grew by 325 million tons in 2011, accounting for 87% of the 374 million ton global increase in coal use.

China now uses 47 percent of the world’s coal. It’s an almost unfathomable figure.

The EIA also created this animation of Asian coal growth between 1980 and 2010.

In 2011, China’s per-person carbon footprint neared Europe’s, but was still far behind that of the U.S. As the country consumes more coal, that figure will rise — meaning an exponential increase in carbon dioxide, soot, and other toxic pollutants in the air and atmosphere.

One last bit of bad news, from Financial Times energy reporter Ed Crooks:

We’ll update with some good news if possible. Someday.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Almost half of all coal burned in the world is burned in China

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BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

by oks23po Posted on January 14, 2013

BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

By Philip Bump

British Petroleum, former record-holder for “most inept at U.S. offshore drilling,” has a favor to ask of the government. Yeah, sure, the government says that 4.9 million barrels of oil were spilled when the Deepwater Horizon went blooey, but if we could agree it was actually more like, oh, 4.1 million, that would save BP a few bucks.

From FuelFix:

The U.S. government has asserted that the well discharged 4.9 million barrels of oil, or 206 million gallons. BP stated again in its filing Friday that it believes the spill was significantly smaller, though it hasn’t publicly provided its own estimate.

With a finding of gross negligence, the 4.9-million-barrel figure would carry a maximum Clean Water Act fine of more than $21 billion.

How big a dent would this obviously scientifically accurate adjustment make?

Such a ruling could reduce BP’s fine by as much as $3.4 billion if the court were to rule that BP acted with gross negligence when its Macondo well blew out 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, leading to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP doesn’t understand why this little incident has to be so expensive.

Data for 2012 hasn’t yet been released, but in 2011, BP only managed to pull in about $24 billion in profit. So you can see that having to pay for all of the damage that the company actually did would be a major imposition. That’s an extra $3.4 billion the company could be putting toward drilling more holes in the ocean floor, after all, and we certainly wouldn’t want it to stop doing that.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

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The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 3, 2013

The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

By Philip Bump

Ever wonder how much it costs to have a subsidiary role in leaking millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and countless sea animals and gutting the regional economy for months on end?

It costs $1.4 billion.

Transocean has agreed to pay a total of $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines and penalties for its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010, the Department of Justice just announced.

Under a federal court settlement, it will also plead guilty to violating the Clean Water Act. And Transocean will have to take steps to improve safety and emergency response procedures on its drilling rigs.

So there you go. $1.4 billion. Write a check, mail it to Washington, and get to polluting. That’s how capitalism works.

Source

Transocean to Pay $1.4 Billion in Gulf Spill Accord, The New York Times

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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72 percent of bids at California’s carbon auction came from one company’s mistake

by Myrna Posted on December 21, 2012

72 percent of bids at California’s carbon auction came from one company’s mistake

By Philip Bump

abcFred

“I bid a bajillion dollars.”

Remember that time you went to an auction and you bid on 21 times as many items as you intended to? No, of course not. Who would do that?

Power company Edison International is who.

From Bloomberg:

Edison, owner of the state’s second-biggest power utility, submitted a proposal in the wrong format and offered to buy 21 times more allowances than it wanted on Nov. 14, documents obtained by Bloomberg show.

When the state Air Resources Board said last month that it had received three bids for every available permit, it failed to mention that Edison accounted for nearly 72 percent of the offers. Had the company submitted its proposals in the right format, about 225,000 permits would have gone unsold at auction, Bloomberg calculations based on data from the report show.

Ha ha. Oops! If Edison had bought 72 percent of the 28.7 million credits offered, which sold at the unexpectedly low price of $10.09, that would have been an investment of about $208 million.

It wasn’t though.

Most of Edison’s bids were eventually disqualified after exceeding auction limits, and the company ended up buying 4.05 million allowances, still 1.61 million permits more than it had intended to, according to an Edison report presented to company executives. Permits sold for $10.09 each, 9 cents above the state’s lowest allowable price, known as the “floor,” the air board said. …

On Dec. 6, California’s air board released a second set of results from its auction, saying there were just 1.06 bids for every permit offered in the Nov. 14 sale once it disqualified bids from a “very small number of auction participants” who exceeded purchasing, holding or bid guarantee limits. Permits still sold out at 9 cents above the floor, it said.

So Edison spent about $40 million — $16 million more than anticipated. Be on the lookout for a new line item on your bill next month, Edison customers.

And if you happen to know any executives at Edison International, you might kindly suggest that they stay away from eBay.

An Edison International executive, circa 1959.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

by RubinkJoseph Posted on December 17, 2012

Senator famous for shooting cap-and-trade bill argues for gun control

By Philip Bump

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) pledged to always defend West Virginia. To that end, in an infamous 2010 campaign ad, the good senator (then governor) loaded up his rifle and shot a hole in the already-dead cap-and-trade bill.

In Manchin’s mind, that’s defending West Virginia — halting policies that would demand coal companies incur the costs of their pollution. And what better visual metaphor than the gun? Blam. Shot dead.

But Manchin’s had a change of heart. Now, it seems, he sees the error in that ad. No, not the part about how he was arguing against a policy that held coal to account. No, now Manchin thinks we need more limits on guns.

From Politico:

West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — who has an “A” rating from the NRA and is a lifetime member of the pro-gun rights group — said Monday that it was time to “move beyond rhetoric” on gun control.

“I just came with my family from deer hunting,” Manchin said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.” “I’ve never had more than three shells in a clip. Sometimes you don’t get more than one shot anyway at a deer. It’s common sense. It’s time to move beyond rhetoric. We need to sit down and have a common-sense discussion and move in a reasonable way.” …

“I don’t know anyone in the hunting or sporting arena that goes out with an assault rifle,” he said. “I don’t know anybody that needs 30 rounds in the clip to go hunting. I mean, these are things that need to be talked about.”

These are things that need to be talked about. With the memory of dead first-graders all too fresh in mind, we need to talk about how unchecked gun ownership, the unlimited ability to own weapons and ammunition, is a threat to public health.

Meanwhile, coal killed some 13,000 people in the U.S. in 2010 — and there will be uncountable future deaths resulting from the carbon dioxide that coal leaves in the atmosphere.

Manchin is right about revisiting gun laws, of course. But one can’t help but wonder what evidence he’ll need before he sees that casually shooting anti-pollution legislation was a misjudgment in more than one way.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Yoko Ono is here to convince you that fracking is bad

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 12, 2012

Yoko Ono is here to convince you that fracking is bad

By Philip Bump

I have some familiarity with modern and contemporary art. I enjoy it. I know a Twombly from a Rauschenberg from an Ellsworth. A woman sits in a museum for weeks on end, silently, or a man creates artwork from explosions? I get it. Generally.

But this?

Not a fan of Yoko Ono. In 2002, I went to an Ono exhibit at the MoMA in San Francisco. It was one of the worst exhibits I’ve seen there: trite, pretentious, slathered with the artist’s name. I doubt my assessment of her work is unique — and, of course, others dislike Ono for other reasons.

Therefore, I highly, highly doubt this ad, which ran full-page in this week’s New York Times, is going to resolve the debate over fracking.

Click to embiggen.

Don’t get me wrong: The science of the ad is generally but-not-always on-point, if hewing to a worst-case scenario. And I imagine that people scanning the ad from top to bottom would find it interesting, perhaps informative. But my concern is what happens once they hit the bottom and see that big “YOKO.” (Which is a hip expression standing for “You Only Kill-the-Beatles Once.”) If a reader has been conditioned to start rolling his eyes when seeing that name, will he be able to read the #DONTFRACKNY hashtag? Will he even be able to tweet at all?

If your response to this ad was different than mine, the group Artists Against Fracking is also holding a video contest. Create a 30-second TV spot or a three-minute explainer on fracking and Yoko (and her son Sean) may pick you as the winner.

The good news: The bar for a quality video isn’t that high.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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2012 saw the fewest wildfires in a decade — but the second-most acres burned ever

by biglermyrta910 Posted on December 12, 2012

2012 saw the fewest wildfires in a decade — but the second-most acres burned ever

By Philip Bump

This is the most calm the Forest Service’s active fire map has looked all year.

USFS

After all, here was the year 2012 in fires, as compiled by NASA.

NASA/E360

From the description: “Areas of yellow and orange indicate larger and more intense fires, while many of the less intense fires, shown in red, represent prescribed burns started for brush clearing and agriculture and ecosystem management.” Click to embiggen.

Through August, the continental U.S. had seen the most acreage burned by wildfires in history. Happily, that trend didn’t continue. We only came in second.

Data from

National Interagency Fire Center

.

2012 was actually not a bad year for fires as discrete incidents. But notice how few fires did all of that damage. As we noted over the summer, the link between fire intensity and climate change isn’t direct. Clearly, though, the year’s epic drought meant drier conditions — and such drought is strongly correlated to climatic shifts. So it’s not surprising to see that this year’s fires were the most intense in a decade.

Data from

National Interagency Fire Center

.

It’s this acres-burned-per-fire number that we don’t want to see rising in the future. Let’s hope this year is an aberration — particularly those of us who live near wildlands.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

by Myrna Posted on December 11, 2012

Gas line break creates massive fireball in W. Va.

By Philip Bump

WOWKTV

A natural-gas transmission line in West Virginia ruptured this afternoon. From WOWKTV:

[An] explosion rocked Sissonville shortly before 1 p.m. today, setting several homes on fire and forcing officials to issue a shelter in place for local residents.

The explosion caused huge flames to race throughout the area, lapping both sides on Interstate 77, which has been closed to all northbound and southbound traffic.

Sgt. Michael Bayless with the West Virginia State Police said the investigation into the cause of the explosion is still ongoing and very preliminary. He said crews with Columbia Gas are working to shut off the pipeline to control the fire. However he said that process is very delicate because they don’t want to reignite the explosion.

So far, no injuries have been reported.

The Charleston Gazette’s Ken Ward is tweeting updates; we’ve compiled information about the blast below.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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Unless hell freezes over, 2012 will be the hottest year in U.S. history

by Myrna Posted on December 6, 2012

Unless hell freezes over, 2012 will be the hottest year in U.S. history

By Philip Bump

Even if the United States has the coldest December in its history — even if it’s a full degree (F) colder on average than the previous coldest December ever — 2012 will be the hottest year in American history.

Click to embiggen.

We figured this was coming. But even though November wasn’t particularly hot — coming in 2.1 degrees F above the 20th century average, making it only the 20th-warmest November ever — it’s now almost a certainty.

From the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration:

The January-November period was the warmest first 11 months of any year on record for the contiguous United States. The national temperature of 57.1°F was 3.3°F above the 20th century average, and 1.0°F above the previous record warm January-November of 1934. During the 11-month period, 18 states were record warm and an additional 24 states were top ten warm.

Ninety-five of the NOAA’s 180 long-term temperature monitoring stations have seen their warmest years on record. Eighteen states have seen the warmest year-to-date in history. Every state that is in color on the map below has had temperatures in 2012 which were between the 10th-hottest (yellow) to hottest ever (bright red).

This is because of climate change, mostly, and so maybe we should do something about that.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

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