Here's an idea; Rather than wait for BP to pay up, seize the well. Nationalize it as part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and to make LA, FL and any other states this shit washes up on whole.
There's 50 Million barrels down there, about $5 Billion worth.
We'd also see immediate income as we'd stop taking "in kind" payments of oil to the strategic reserve from these oil companies and start collecting cash.
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Now, if the government getting in the oil business sounds crazy to you, you should know that we already are.
"But wait" you say, "Only Socialists like Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro would ever be comfortable with the government selling oil!".
Twice in our history governement oil has hit the market. The two presidents who brought US government oil to the market: those pinko commies Bush 41 & 43. (1991 & 2005).
First a primer on the SPR:
Right now we take "in kind" oil payments on the leasing rights we sell to oil companies. Then we store that oil in salt domes we have to locate, evacuate, and fill with the oil.
The SPR thus takes time, energy, and environmental and monetary resources, to locate build, develop and maintain.
The total deposits maintained within the SPR right now are 700 Million barrels but set to expand to 1 billion. The SPR is primary located in Louisiana so the environmental impact is felt there.
Our government contracts the management of the SPR to DYNMCDERMOTT PETROLEUM OPS CO at a cost of $579,033,675.00 over the last 7 years.
This is just the maintenance cost over the last 7 years not the total cost over it’s life span.
It has cost over 21 Billion to build and maintain since 1974:
The SPR process is this :
First it requires doing geological surveys to find subterranean salt domes big enough to store 1 Billion barrels of oil.
Then we have to excavate the salt domes ( this requires drilling and pumping water into the salt then extracting the solution)
Then we have build the pipe networks to get oil from the oil companies to our SPR and from our SPR sites to the refineries.
Then when we do want to put our government oil on the market (as again our pinko commie president GW Bush did in 2005) there is no natural pressure in the salt domes, so we have to pump water in again to get our oil out.
All of this at a cost of 21 billion dollars since 1974.
Isn't if far more efficient if the Government just owned a few nationalized Wells?
If we earmarked 30% of the oil from the nationalized wells to green energy infrastructure we'd be able to get off oil completely a lot sooner.