BP to Fight Federal Government Over Liability

It appears that BP is expected to fight the federal government's demands for BP to pay all costs, both direct and indirect, stemming from the Gulf oil spill.  Without going off on too much of a tangent, suffice it to say that BP and other companies associated with the rig most certainly are responsible for the costs associated with cleaning up the spill, rehabilitating the damage, and all "legitimate claims," as BP's CEO Tony Hayward has himself has stated.

However, it's those "indirect" costs which are of concern.  Specifically, the government is demanding that BP pay unspecified (and ever-increasing) millions of dollars in lost wages for oil rig workers occurring as a result of the government's moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling.  Not that I harbor any secret fondness for BP, but why should BP pay lost wages resulting from a government-imposed moratorium?  The White House's rationale is of course that BP caused the disaster which led to the moratorium.  And of course this rationale is utter nonsense.  There could be any number of arguments made using this rationale for endless things for which BP "should" be responsible.  The fact of the matter is BP didn't impose the moratorium; the government did, so the government should be responsible for the lost wages, if anyone.  More importantly, though, the moratorium itself is disastrously absurd; it will obviously cause lost wages, not to mention significantly and negatively affect our crude oil supply and force the country to rely even more heavily (and dangerously) on foreign oil.  Yes, great idea ye infinitely wise federal government.  Let's completely end drilling in our own country where we literally have billions of barrels available, and instead rely even more heavily on foreign oil which has none of the environmental protections that we do, and thus indirectly fund hostile regimes and possibly even terrorism.

Finally, there's the small matter of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, whereby BP can only be held responsible for the direct costs of the clean-up and couldn't be held responsible for lost wages of oil workers.  Oh yeah, forgot about that one.  The Obama Administration has no legal authority to demand BP pay indiscriminant and unspecified (potentially endless) indirect costs.  That act was put in place specifically to prevent this from happening.  Hey people, have we forgotten that we actually need BP to remain solvent so they can actually pay the legitimate claims and get this mess cleaned up?

All that's to say, let's try focusing not so much on a witch-hunt and making this a fairy tale about the evils of greedy capitalism, and more on actually stopping the leak, cleaning up the spill, and making sure this never happens again.