Nobody could do anything. Exxon was ordered to pay about 5 billion (usd) in damages to fishermen, tourism people, etc whose livelihoods were fucked because there was oil everywhere.H20nly wrote: This same b.s. happened in Alaska in the 90's. Exxon weaseled outta paying up and nobody did shit about it.
Instead of doing the honorable thing and attempting to make the situation right, they tied it up in courts over the next TWENTY YEARS with appeals and so on and eventually had it reduced to about $500 million, about 10% of the original settlement. ***Note that Justice Sam Allito excused himself from the case because he owned between $100-250k of Exxon stock at the time....
Sorry, so your boat is fucked, huh? What were you going to do with your settlement money? Medical expenses? College for your kids? You were saying you had some retirement plans?
Tough Shit. This is hardball. It's big oil.
Exxon has DEEEEEEEEEEEEEP pockets and it proved to be a sound strategy for them to stall and drain everyone emotionally and financially over the years (whilst people put life plans on hold) Twenty years later and they still had uber expensive lawyers on the case. It's just business as usual. Profits, stockholders, numbers. Just numbers.
So, after reducing the original figure by about 4.5 billion, Exxon then merely cut checks from a fraction of the interest they made in their obscene windfall profits of the 2000's.
Meanwhile, Exxon's making PILES of money, like approximately $36 billion in profits a year. Lee Raymond, the CEO at the time was making 50 million a year and cleared about $400 million in retirement bonuses in 2005. After taxes and attorneys fees the $500 million settlement for 33,000 plaintiffs was roughly equivalent to the retirement bonus for this one man. Thanks for your 6 years with the company, Mr. Raymond.
So, one would think that business is bad for ExxonMobil in Alaska. They're bastards right. Assholes who take advantage of the little people and have no accountability for their fuck ups... WRONG!
During all this, Exxon is aligning itself with TransCanda to build a natural gas pipleline where they will stand to make yet even more money over decades to come. For that we can thank the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act and current Governor at the time, Sarah Palin.
Soooooo, in summation: I hate to say it, but it looks very similar to the Alaska spill, which is not good for individuals whose livelihoods were changed forever as a result of the spill. They're throwing money at getting images of progress as well as trying to buy off people for 5k cleanup contracts. The worst BP has to deal with is their public relations until the shit is plugged or whatever.
1990's Oil Pollution Act's $75 million (peanuts) cap for liability is a joke and you best believe that they'll also tie up the inevitable settlement in litigation for years, a la Exxon, because, you know, they saved about $4 billion dollars by doing so.
Sad to say, but this is some serious grease ball shit. With any luck, having the internet around will help expose how extremely serious this spill is and hopefully give the government some leverage in creating some sort of legitimate consequences for monumental environmental disasters such a this.
On the bright side though, it could lead to tighter restrictions for the oil industry, but you know, probably not.
