Who Knows How Much This Will Cost?

As BP continues to struggle to cap the leaking oil in the Gulf, one of the first things we learned is that they only have to pay $75 Million of consequential damages (losses affected people will have to their property and businesses) plus the cost of cleanup. This law, of course, was written and passed in 1990 after the Exxon Valdez spill.

After the oil hit the sea, Bill Nelson and others in Congress immediately said that we need to raise the limits of liability for consequential damages (loss of jobs for fishermen, for example) from oil spills from $75 Million to $10 Billion.

Both amounts are woefully inadequate.

Why limit it to $10 Billion when we don't even know the extent of the current disaster?

Maybe Big Oil will operate more safely if they don't have their liability limited.

Take a look at the chart on Page 3P of the May 9, 2010, St. Petersburg Times for a glimpse at the 2009 profits of the oil companies and you'll see that $10 Billion is a drop in one year's bucket of profits. (Exxon $45.2 Billion, BP $21.2 Billion, Shell $26.3 Billion, Chevron $23.9 Billion, Citgo $7.5 Billion....)

Who came up with the $10 Billion Dollar number that Bill Nelson is touting?

Until the Oil Companies can show they can cap the damn leak, we shouldn't even be talking about any caps on their liability. We don't have any idea yet what the extent of the damage from this one leak will be. Is this just another attempt to build in "too big to fail protections" in another form by capping damages?

Are the oil companies ever going to cap their prices that we pay at the pump? Then why should we allow them to act recklessly, without impunity?

Let Senator Nelson know that there should be no caps!