Kevin Costner scores many $millions from BP. <Costner had lost $20 million in an earlier effort to market the devices to the oil and gas industry, but Cobb said Costner and Smith each made $15 million off their investments in Ocean Therapy Solutions after the BP spill.BP deployed a few of the centrifuges on a barge in June 2010. The company capped the well the following month, and it was permanently sealed in September 2010.
Costner praised the jury for "doing their best to understand everything" in a complex case.
"They were really smart, and it was my good luck that they saw the truth of the story," he said.>
BP bought them because they had to be seen to be doing all they could to reduce contamination, even though it was obvious from the beginning that the broken well would have little environmental or economic consequence. The main harm, other than the immediate destruction of the platform and deaths and injuries, loss of oil and cost of the well, resulted from stupid political responses by political and other poseurs.
No doubt Kevin was not swindling, but his windfall gains were thanks to BP's over-reaction, forced by their knowledge that the political system would be out to get them to make hay while the sun shone - "Don't let a crisis go to waste". The big winners were the lawyers. Swarms of others made out like bandits too. The USA overall had a net economic gain in the $billions as megabucks were transferred from shareholders to anyone in the USA who could get their nose in the trough.
It was obvious from the beginning that pollution harm would be trivial, due to prevailing winds, well-established ocean currents which would take the oil around Florida, up the coast, with Stokes Law spreading the oil drops through vast quantities of ocean as they drifted slowly to the surface, being spread out more and more and more. There were attempts to assert the oil was hiding in submarine plumes but those claims just showed the ignorance of the claimants who don't understand how drops of oil of different sizes gradually float to the surface at different rates, while being distributed in different directions by different currents, then blown around by wind and broken up by waves, while being smashed by heavy sunlight, oxidized, and eaten by opportunistic fungi and other microbes.
As Tony Hayward said simply and correctly, the ocean is very big and the spill was very small.
President Obama's sidekick said they had their boot on BP's neck. Obama did not disavow the comment. That was one of the more valuable lessons to be learned from the mess = Obama and co like to get their boots on necks. First they came for BP but "I hate Big Oil and they get what they deserve" ... When boots go on necks, it says more about the people with the boots than the people with the necks.
Mqurice |
