Globe and Mail: For BP, now come the lawyers

Continuing the media coverage on BP’s drastic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, here comes another article which warns of BP’s impending litigation and possible destruction.
Currently, BP is defaced around US and even New York Daily News called the CEO, Tony Hayward, “the most hated—and clueless—man in America”.

BP has lost 1/3 of its value, around $60 billion US, which is equivalent to the value of Royal Bank of Canada (the largest bank in Canada). The company is Britain’s largest company and the world’s leading oil producer. BP could potentially spend decades fighting in court, costing them on top of the multi-billion dollars worth of clean-up required in the future (BP has already spent $1 billion US to alleviate the mess in the gulf).

In 1989, Exxon, the current leading oil company (by stock market value) had a similar oil spill, in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Contrary to the gulf which is America’s industrial, tourism and ecological heartlands, the spill occurred in the wilderness. The spill cost Exxon little: $2billion to clean the mess and $1 billion for the courts. It spent almost 2 decades fighting litigations.

Seeing the aggregate damage inflicted on BP will be interesting.