(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.

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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.

(At the BP claims center in Gretna, Louisiana, July 17. Photo: BP)

The first report came in today from Pro Publica's investigation into the way BP is paying (and not paying) damage claims from the Deepwater Horizon disaster. BP set $20 billion aside for people whose livelihoods have disappeared as a result of its nightmare well.

Unless your livelihood depended on commission. Duane Sandy sells storage units in Fort Walton Beach. Since the Deepwater Horizon began leaking, Sandy says he hasn't closed the deal on a single one. First BP told him he hadn't documented the claim well enough. And then?

Sandy said that when he called BP's adjuster, he heard a different story -- that BP would not pay his claim because it was not approving payments for income loss based on commissions. "Once they heard I got paid by commission, they didn't care what I did," Sandy said.

Hours after Pro Publica posted the story, BP put out a press release acknowledging that it's not paying certain claims. In classic BP-ese, the press release is titled "BP Takes Action to Fast-Track Claims for Gulf Coast Businesses." Apparently they're waiting for claims czar Ken Feinberg to sort out the ones BP doesn't understand.

[Pro Publica]

Very tiny Coast Guard photo

BP says it's ready to try, again, to seal the Deepwater Horizon well permanently. First up, maybe as soon as tonight, is an attempted "static kill." It's a new version of the failed top kill, which involved pumping mud and gunk into the well from barges on the surface. Now that the well has been capped, BP hopes to pump mud and gunk in at the level of the sea floor.

Which could totally work.

Now we can start picking through the mistakes that set the stage for this disaster and the ones that made the cleanup such a shame. In the former, we have a suggestion that humans are tired of alarms, too tired to keep like the ones on the Deepwater Horizon either to respond or to keep them in place. In the latter category, we have a new report from Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) that the Coast Guard "rubber-stamped" BP's request to blanket parts of the Gulf of Mexico with the very yummy, carginogenic dispersant Corexit.

We're still getting reports that tarballs are washing into wildlife refuges, while cleanup crews scratch at far-less oiled beaches where tourists and news cameras roam.

Decades may pass before we fully understand the effects of this disaster. For now, we have the image of that stupid, stupid well pouring tens of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, day after day after day, from spring until summer. And we have the first hits of what's happened to the wildlife in that oil's path. Today's critter count from the Federal Wildlife Service says 3,271 birds were found dead, along with 503 sea turtles, 64 mammals and one reptile. The sun set for them early in this story.

At the BP claims center in Gretna, Louisiana, July 17.

How often do you get the chance to help a Pulitzer Prize winning news org and be part of telling the truth about an environmental felon like BP? The investigative nonprofitPro Publica wants your help in figuring out how well BP is doing in paying financial claims from its Deepwater Horizon Disaster.

Amanda Michel writes:

BP's data show that it has returned more than half of submitted claims because they "lack enough information for BP to make a payment." In most of those cases, it has told people that they have to provide more documentation to prove that their claim is legitimate.

Most of us won't have filed a claim, of course. But we might know someone who has. And we might know someone who knows someone.

Here's how you can help. If you've filed a claim yourself, let Pro Publica know. If you haven't, pass this story around. For this kind of reporting to work -- for a true and accurate picture to emerge -- as many people as possible need to know about the project.

We'll keep you posted as the data rolls in.

[Pro Publica]

A hundred days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP got the headline it has been waiting for. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says oil from the well is rapidly disappearing from the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Scientists don't know yet about the potential effects of oil under the surface -- it's complicated -- but the visible oil is vanishing.

The oil disappears. CEO Tony Hayward disappears. The comprehensive climate and energy bill disappears. Just like magic.

And hey, BP told us this would happen. Hayward announced early on that "the Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean" -- plenty big enough to hide the largest oil spill in our nation's history. Or rather, plenty big enough to consume it.

The Gulf of Mexico can take it, BP hydrogeologist Lyle Bruce told the citizens of Orange Beach, Alabama, back in the early days of the spill. Bruce told them not to worry, that skimming and burning and evaporation and microbes would clean this mess up. I can't say it makes me feel any better about it, even now.

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