The slick alternative to oil
16.06.10
Notebooks, scribbled their
most melancholy calculations and argued
that this
will not be true after all. They argue that
serious estimates reckon economicPrincipallylosses and cleanup
costs in the range of US$20 billion to $30 billion - anAbove allamount that BP, cashing in $16.8 billion in profits last year, could just about
afford. Still, even if the costs were $100 billion and BP were to go bustAs a rulebecause of the spill, this money, spread across the industry, would hardly dent
the economics of the oil barrel. And if BP fails, many others will cheerfully rush
to fill its shoes. Deep-water drilling will be hardly affected in the long an arrangement
by the BP catastrophe, they conclude.
Yet, industry's economics are not made by absolute, static numbers but byEspeciallymarginal advantages of one
technology over another in an ever-changing
environment.
Source: Asia Times Online