BP In The News - For All the Wrong Reasons

With everyone else away, I'll do a short silly-season run of company-based pieces - energy, of course - starting with BP.   

CU always told me that BP's efforts to get back in with the Russians were ill-fated. 

My BP insiders said otherwise.  Yes, they said, we were burned last time around (like Exxon and Shell and Chevron and Marathon and ...) but this time, *nudge nudge*, everything is going to work out.

What is is with oil companies and Russia ?  Well, huge reserves, for one thing.   And somehow it will all be different next time.  But it never is, because the Russians don't change their ways in a hurry: they never have, and why would they start now ?  Might is right, contracts mean nothing, win-win is for wimps.

Anyhow, against all better judgement I sort-of believed them (though not to the extent of going long BP, oh no, not with Two-Faced Obama still on their case).

So BP's travails continue. It's a measure of their size and underlying muscle that they can survive all this in any kind of shape at all.  But for how long can a company soldier on with such poor judgement on big issues ?

ND