(Demotivator by William Benhoff, from a photo by Mark and Vicki Cipolle)

The year-end news for BP is peaches. The company behind the worst environmental disaster in our nation's history will probably have to spend more than the $40 billion the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe was expected to cost -- but less than the $200 billion Wall Street expected. From AP:

BP will survive the worst oil spill in U.S. history for several key reasons: It has little debt; its global businesses are forecast to generate $26 billion next year in cash flow from operations; the environmental impact of the spill isn't as bad as feared; and the government seems unlikely to ban BP from Gulf drilling.

Back in September, BP sort of threatened not to pay for the cleanup if the government kept it from drilling new wells in the Gulf of Mexico.

When a BP hydrogeologist looked at the nightmare of the Deepwater Horizon spill -- that's his voice in the clip -- he saw an event that the Gulf of Mexico would easily recover from. The new House Science and Technology Committee chair, Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Texas) looked past the nightmare entirely, to a vision of the Earth's bounty:

As we saw that thing bubbling out, blossoming out -- all that energy, every minute of every hour of every day of every week -- that was tremendous to me. That we could deliver that kind of energy out there -- even on an explosion.

Hey, it wasn't a disaster! It was oil exploration! And my goodness, there's a lot down there.

Wonkroom/Grist report that the oil state politician has, of course, gotten some oil money -- including some from BP.

(Testing the new marsh washer. BP photo.)

Today marks the sixth-month anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. Interested parties met for a conference on oil spills in Tampa, where an official of Exxon Mobil assured them a cap-and-siphon system in the making would never have to be used -- with proper prevention -- and in any case will absolutely positively work.

And then there was this, as reported in the New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Wednesday's opening session began with the industry sponsors -- which included BP and other major oil companies -- presenting congratulatory plaques to several Gulf states and the U.S. Coast Guard. Hundreds of people clapped.

A panelist from Texas then thanked BP for stepping up and doing a good job in the Gulf spill response. A Mississippi official on the panel also congratulated the Coast Guard and urged people to visit his state because, he asserted, there was very little impact there from the spill. A Coast Guard official told those gathered it is important to never forget your successes.

(Demotivator by William Benhoff, from a photo by Mark and Vicki Cipolle)

Almost from the outset of the Deepwater Horizon disaster on April 20, BP has insisted that this wasn't its accident. Now, after four months of investigating itself, BP appears to have arrived at more or less the same conclusion. From the executive summary of BP's report (pdf):

The team did not identify any single action or inaction that caused this accident. Rather, a complex and interlinked series of mechanical failures, human judgments, engineering design, operational implementation and team interfaces came together to allow the initiation and escalation of the accident. Multiple companies, work teams and circumstances were involved over time.

The BP report comes with video and appendices and will take a little while to read. Go for it.

If you're in this for what's going to happen next, you can get that in one word: Lawsuits. BP partner Transocean bit back, right away with this statement:

This is a self-serving report that attempts to conceal the critical factor that set the stage for the Macondo incident: BP's fatally flawed well design. In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk - in some cases, severely. Those decisions, made exclusively by BP, included:

Using a long production string rather than a casing tie back, decreasing the number of barriers to gas flow.

Neglecting to run a cement bond log (CBL) to test the integrity of the cement.

Installing fewer than one third of the recommended number of centralizers, dramatically increasing the risk of cement channeling and gas flow.

Failing to conduct a complete "bottoms up" circulation of the well to insure the quality of the cement seal.

Not running a lockdown sleeve to secure the production string to the well head, eliminating yet another barrier to a blowout.

Transocean's investigation is ongoing, and will be concluded when all of the evidence is in, including the critical information the company has requested of BP but has yet to receive.

(Ask the pelicans of Queen Bess Island what BP owes./Coast Guard photo)

If Congress keeps BP from drilling new wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the company says it may not be able to keep its much advertised committment to "make this right." Also, people should stop asking BP for more. From the New York Times:

[A]s state and federal officials, individuals and businesses continue to seek additional funds beyond the minimum fines and compensation that BP must pay under the law, the company has signaled its reluctance to cooperate unless it can continue to operate in the Gulf of Mexico.

For the record, BP says it will keep its commitments for a $20 billion fund for damages and fines, $100 million for rig workers idled by the moratorium (not so many, it turns out), and $500 million to research the effects of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

The problem for BP is that if the federal government puts a crimp in production, BP will feel pain. Seriously, that's the problem. "If we are unable to keep those fields going, that is going to have a substantial impact on our cash flow," said BP America exec David Nagle tells the Times. That "makes it harder for us to fund things, fund these programs."

Nagle sounds like a kid who gets grounded and then complains to his parents that he's missing the fun on Saturday night. Yes, as the claims and penalties roll in, BP is going to feel pain. What's really wrong here is that BP won't feel nearly enough pain. The company has been among the world's most profitable for a long time. The latest Fortune 500 rankings show BP as the fourth largest corporation, with profits -- profits, not revenue -- of $16,578,000,000.

With $16.578 billion sloshing around, BP and its shareholders still cut corners as they went about the risky business of oil production. And now BP and its shareholders can use some of those billions to pay for what they've done.

You're looking at what may be the very last vestige of BP's jaw-dropping "Reports from the Gulf." Remember the fun we had with those posts by Paula Kolmar and Tom Seslar, who told us about the ballet of the oil skimmers and the meditative joys of flying over their company's Deepwater Horizon disaster?

Now it's goodbye to all that, with Kolmar's old blog on BP.com reduced to a stray bit of metadata that someone forgot to scrub. As of Thursday, you could still find it tucked into the code for the Beach status page. If you uncover any remnants of Seslar's old blog, send a screengrab, OK?

A BP spokesperson says the company took the reports down at some point this month. She said the press office wasn't able to find out when Kolmar and Seslar's work got the disappearing treatment. But this, supposedly, is why: "Both of them went home and were no longer reporting," she said.

Corexit me if I'm wrong, but I think most websites leave a writer's work in place when that writer moves on -- the long tail and posterity and all. It turns out BP can do a reasonable job of erasing an embarrassing P.R. move. Now if only the company could hit delete on those millions of barrels of oil it dumped into the Gulf of Mexico.

After the jump, BP Press Release Theater.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BP seriously tweeted this at just past 7 p.m. Eastern.

If you click the link, you get an AP story on MSNBC, "Scientists think Gulf can recover." It's a survey of scientists who say that yes, the Gulf of Mexico can and likely will bounce back from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. The story comes with a subhead: "Researchers described oil-stained ecosystem as 'resilient.' "

Which they did. There's more to the story, though, than BP lets on. Like this part:

[N]othing about the Gulf is simple. Just as often as scientists use the word "resilient," they use the word "stress."

We thought you should know.

BP's boom in the Gulf of Mexico has been more than faulty, says conservationist Drew Wheelan, more than badly deployed and chronically inadequate. It has also proved fatal for some of the smaller birds that nest along the edges of islands. Wheelan has been checking on Queen Bess Island, in particular, in Louisiana's Barataria Bay -- one of the places we visited this spring -- where a rookier of royal terns has been devastated.

[Gulf Coast Oil Spill]