Applauding it all away

BP refuses to put figure on how much oil was leaked in Gulf oil disaster

In its first sustainability report since the Deepwater Horizon explosion triggered the spill last year, BP claims that it leaked more oil in 2006 and 2008 than it did in 2010. Wait, what?!

Yes, right there on the first page of the report, the company lists the amount of oil, CO2 and methane it released into the environment in 2010. However, on closer inspection it turns out that those figures don't include the oil leaked in last summer's Gulf spill. The reason? According to a message from the company in the report's fine print, "no accurate determination" of the extent of the disaster has been made to date. The survey goes on to note that the company decided to omit that embarrassing incident in the Gulf "due to our reluctance to report data that has such a high degree of uncertainty." So they merely chose not to factor in the biggest offshore oil spill in American history.

Strange that they're telling us now that their data "has such a high degree of uncertainty" since it seems like only yesterday they were quite certain that the amount of oil spilled was "tiny" (comparatively speaking)

Tony Hayward, the beleaguered chief executive of BP, has claimed its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is “relatively tiny” compared with the “very big ocean”.

Anyway, we anxiously await the revision of these figures once the "accurate determination" comes in. Can we sit here while we wait? Should we bring a Snickers?

Meanwhile,

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world's largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

Accordingly, Transocean's executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

Because 11 horrific deaths in one explosion is really tiny when you compare that to the size of the ocean they died in.