Hmmm…

This morning the Miami Herald is reporting that BP doesn’t want to start collecting oil from the well.

BP is now indicating that since there don’t seem to be any problems, they want to leave the well shut down and let the relief well plug it without opening the valves on the cap.

Several reasons occur to me

– the vessels that will collect the oil are leased, like all “BP” oil field equipment, and they don’t want to pay for them;

– if they collect the oil from the well without any losses, everyone will know how much oil is actually flowing out of the well every day, rather than guessing;

– the BP board wants to get the well out of the headlines.

On that last note, the Vancouver Sun has an AFP story based on an article in the Sunday Times of Britain about BP board activity. I thought this paragraph was interesting:

Directors of the firm are at an early stage of canvassing shareholders about possible options, which include increasing the amount of in-house engineering which takes place, rather than outsourcing it, the paper said.

What a concept – a multi-national petroleum industry giant actually having having people on their staff who know something about the engineering of drilling for oil.

I keep saying this – the current corporations outsource everything and have almost no real knowledge among their employees about what they actually do. The corporations are made up of headquarters staffing, marketing, and a legal department. They outsource the actual work to other people.

What they seem to be contemplating is getting the BP logo out of sight and out of mind in the US by dumping their gas stations and refineries.