Comments for White House Energy Advisor: Small Oil Firms Depend on Government Handouts to Survive at http://www.cepr.net , comment 1 to 4 out of 4 comments http://www.cepr.net Fri, 24 May 2013 19:36:00 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/white-house-energy-advisor-small-oil-firms-depend-on-government-handouts-to-survive#comment-1312 By shell I mean no assets... - Erich Riesenberg Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:40:59 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/white-house-energy-advisor-small-oil-firms-depend-on-government-handouts-to-survive#comment-1311 I suppose one good thing about the BP Spill is that it is the BP Spill and not the Shell Corp Spill. - Erich Riesenberg Sun, 04 Jul 2010 16:40:14 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/white-house-energy-advisor-small-oil-firms-depend-on-government-handouts-to-survive#comment-1297 See a featured piece in the NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/business/04bptax.html?hp - skeptonomist Sun, 04 Jul 2010 04:03:05 +0100 http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/white-house-energy-advisor-small-oil-firms-depend-on-government-handouts-to-survive#comment-1292 Oil prices are too high for the same reason health care costs too much. Malpractice insurance. Perverse incentives cause oil companies to overprotect themselves from lawsuits with excessive safety measures, like ordering way too many overpriced MRI scans of the ocean floor before drilling a deep well when no scans were really necessary. Trial lawyers who chase ambulances and unemployed fishermen for a living are behind the $75M liability cap, because the government as third party pays higher prices for too much insurance which creates a moral hazard to take more drilling risks followed by accidents and lawsuits. Trial lawyers are bringing down the oil industry the way they did the health care industry. Removing the liability cap will result in even more accidents by smaller companies which will have to work twice as hard as large ones to make the insurance payments and take even more risks to do it, so trial lawyers are enriched either way, cap or no cap. Stupid liberals. - izzatzo Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:27:05 +0100