This article first appeared at ProPublica, and was co-published with LAist and KVPR. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
What about profits from other areas?
Or did anyone care?
What about cleaning up as you go along instead of knowing the tax payers will always pay?
C’mon, you privatize profits and socialize losses you silly goose.
Can-do Republicans already have a tried and true solution for this problem. Taxpayers pay the bills. It’s called socialism for the rich, except they prefer to call it keeping government off the backs of jobs makers, or freedom or whatever, anything but what it is.
ETA I see teenlaqueefa already said it. Seems to be a trending solution.
I came here to say exactly that: Capitalism works by privatizing profits and socializing costs, especially shut-down costs.
Bankrupt them then. I don’t see the issue. And sue all the high level executives for all their money, they knew dam well this was going to happen.
“Privatize profit / socialize losses”
Is the central defining principle of the awl bidness.
And the rail business. And the mining industry. And…
Thing is you never see the ExxonMobil logo on the dirty exploration and production end of the oil business. There are a few layers of LLCs from shifty private contractors that keep their fingerprints off the messes they make.
This major issue has sneaked up on us,” said Dwayne Purvis, a Texas-based petroleum reservoir engineer who analyzed profits and cleanup costs for the report.
BS!
Of course. The petroleum industry has always been all about private side profits and public side risk/cost.
Petro companies profited off the wells, therefore they should pay for cleanup. Tax their past earnings. Not difficult.
It’s the American way!
For the industry, this is a feature rather than a bug.
And this is just Calfornia, because California cared enough to collect the data. Figure things are at least as bad in other oil-producing states. (And possibly worst in Alaska, where cleanup costs will be particularly high)
No Morning Memo today?
"Industry hasn’t recognized it, or, if they have, they haven’t talked about it and acted on it.”
There is no way in hell they didn’t recognize it. Capitalism needs to incorporate the costs of clean up and disposal or it’s going to kill us all, it’s that simple. We need to price in the true costs of goods and services so that future generations aren’t left paying for our short-sighted decisions.
Yup…
Oh well, that sucks for them.
Sorry, but the petroleum industry is already having it’s way with the California public, that sees multi-dollar per gallon gas hikes when Putin blows his nose, the Saudis need attention, or an oil exec in Texas needs to up his quartlies by shuttering refineries for ‘maintenance’. Can’t make up $21.5 billion in profits? What a fucking joke. The analysis only looks at empty wells and says, ‘well, there’s no more oil to pay for cleanup moving forward, so you’ll have to do something about that.’
This is more like double-penetration, where Californians will be paying on both the front and back end as the oil companies high-five each other.
“We didn’t think we’d have to pay for all the environmental destruction we’ve caused,” said every oil executive ever. “And we still don’t think we have should have to pay for the all environmental destruction we’ve caused.”