Apparently the US laws covering oil exploration and production requires leaseholders for federally own oil to pay royalties on every drop of oil removed from the ground.  This royalty is required, no matter what becomes of that oil, whether sold, spilled or destroyed. Unlike a brewer or tobacco producer that pays it’s federal excise taxes only on the product packaged for sale. Beer lagering in tanks, wine aging in barrels, etc aren’t taxed until bottled for sale.  Of course excise tax is something placed on a product developed by a business while, an oil lease represents a resource owned by government being sold a predetermined price.  All the oil belongs to the government, if the resource is removed the leaseholder must pay for that resource.

And that is why BP owes Uncle Sam, for oil spilled, in addition to the costs of the cleanup.

I continue on my listing of alternate meanings for BP, despite British Protests

British Protests

Brown Pitch

Broken Pipe

Branded Pollution

Bent Perspective

Bloody Pinheads

Bad Preparation

Bubbling Petroleum

Blatant Posers

Bring Pails

I have nothing wise or helpful to say on the BP oil blowout in the the Gulf of Mexico.  So, i’m just going to list a bunch of nasty names that the letters BP stand for.

Bigtime Polluters - thanks Dick Cheney for making “Bigtime”, big time.

Bad Planning

Big Putz

Bad Preparation

Bad People

Bad Polluters

Bad Profesionals

Big Profanity

Big Profiteer

Big Pinheads

Butthead Professionals

Bitchy President

i’m sure i’ll come up with more, since clearly you can never have enough ways to insult BP