$76,000 or whatever is in this box?

Congratulations, Gulfport, the box is empty!

"They're taking a tough position," city council president Ricky Dombrowski said. "We're just going to continue to push them. How could (the claim) be worth zero when it was originally worth $76,000? I think they've just drawn a line in the sand."

BP initially offered the city $76,000 for tax losses, but the city previously rejected that offer.

BP has paid only two loss of revenue claims to local governments in Mississippi, BP spokesman Ray Melick said. BP records show the city of Moss Point was paid more than $57,000, while the city of Ocean Springs received almost $133,000. Melick said a total of 60 loss-of-revenue claims have been paid to governments along the Gulf of Mexico.

Admittedly Gulfport did ask for $11.8 million including $6.1 million in "community damages" which BP says can only be paid out via the NRDA process. I'd be interested in knowing if they're interpreting their liability through the Oil Pollution Act correctly, there. Unfortunately the article doesn't settle that question.

Stockholm Syndrome

BP exerts too much influence over oil spill cleanup, Louisiana official tells senators

Garret Graves, chairman of the Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority of Louisiana, praised BP for providing $1 billion to begin environmental assessment work, but also said government agencies can't compete with the "armies of attorneys, marketing firms, PR campaigns, lobbyists, scientists and other consultants" the company has assembled.

"It is a modern-day case of Stockholm syndrome whereby responders are dependent upon the financial resources of and have repeatedly shown signs of empathy toward the responsible parties who hold them financially captive to the detriment of the will and best interest of the public," Graves told the Senate Subcommittee on Water and Wildlife.

This week in oil disaster news

Cementing contractor settles with BP Company agrees to pay BP $75M to settle claims

Meanwhile Tranocean has published the results of its internal investigation. Surprise! They find BP negligent.

Mississippi brown shrimp catch is off by nearly one million compared to this time a few years ago.

Traci Floyd, director of the state Department of Marine Resources Shrimp and Crab Bureau, says 903,908 pounds of brown shrimp were caught in the two weeks after the brown shrimp season started on May 25. She says that compares with first two weeks of 2007 when the catch was 1.96 million pounds.

Mark Stewart, an Ocean Springs shrimper, said the shrimp have been small and scarce in Mississippi waters. He says that has resulted in low prices.

This morning on WWL radio, Bob Delgiorno was confusingly describing the low price paid to shrimpers for a scarce and low quality product as a "shrimp glut." Clearly that's not what this is.

Feinberg says he's making progress. Although it's still quite difficult to pin down what that actually means.

The biggest lingering question is: What claims are still out there? The uncertainty rests mostly in the fishing industry, where the true measure of the spill's economic pain is still unfolding. Only 24,000 fishers, crabbers, shrimpers, oyster harvesters and seafood processors have sought final payments so far, and half have settled. The vast majority of them -- about 11,000 -- took the quick payment option of $5,000 for individuals or $25,000 for businesses.

Also there are thousands of fishers who are currently relying on government assistance and periodic (although stingily disbursed) interim payments from GCCF for subsistence alone. And, of course, the long term damage to the fisheries won't be fully known for many years.

Finally, the deadline to submit oil spill related "restoration" project proposals to the Natural Resource Trustees set up by BP on behalf of five Gulf Coast states is this Saturday.

Louisiana will receive a minimum of $100 million for "oil restoration" projects from the trust but will have to compete for a share of an additional $300 million with Texas, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. Despite initial optimism that this money could at least serve as a modest beginning to the massive funding needed to mitigate Louisiana's dire coastal erosion problem, this language appears to restrict the projects to Macondo clean-up only.

Trustees determining early restoration projects are guided in their selection in part by criteria laid down by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. The projects must "contribute to making the environment and the public whole by restoring, rehabilitating, replacing or acquiring the equivalent of natural resources or services injured as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or response, or compensating for interim losses resulting from the incident," according to a recent presentations made by Drue Banta, an attorney for the Governor's Office of Coastal Protection and Restoration, and Stephanie Morris, an attorney for the Louisiana Oil Spill Coordinator's Office.

The projects also must "address one or more specific injuries to natural resources or services associated with the incident." And they must "seek to restore natural resources, habitats or natural resource services of the same type, quality and of comparable ecological and/or human use value to compensate for identified resource and service losses resulting from the incident."

The good news is there may be more money available at some point once the National Resource Damage Assessment is complete.

That money will be deducted from the final bill presented to BP and other responsible parties after completion of the overall Natural Resource Damage Assessment process, which is anticipated to take several years.

The bad news is many observers believe BP is trying to manipulate the NRDA process.