[qiskit]

More like as britain takes russian assets via sanctions, the russians will offset it by taking british assets. So all british assets in russia/ukraine are already lost just like all russian assets in britain are lost.

This is just something their PR team put together to get some good publicity. Like paying media to rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill". Like branding their company as a green eco-friendly after said BP oil spill. Still one of the largest oil companies in the world, but they are green eco-friendly.

[gruez]

>This is just something their PR team put together to get some good publicity. Like paying media to rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill".

Source? I did some rudimentary checking and what you're describing seems like revisionist history and/or conspiracy to me. I checked the news section from wikipedia on that date[1], and it's referred to as "Explosion on Deepwater Horizon drilling rig", with no references to BP (in the title, there are references in the body). The linked sources also do the same. The same lack of BP reference also applies to NPR which had stories from the AP[2] as well as new orleans public radio[3]. Maybe BP bribed all of them, but that seems hard to believe. Looking at the wikipedia page and/or news articles, you can find a less sinister explanation for why it wasn't called the BP oil spill: the drilling rig was owned and operated by Transocean, not BP.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events/April_...

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20100421145719/https://www.npr.o...

[3] https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126183...

[kpommerenke]

The oil rig was owned by Transocean, but leased by BP.

"In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In April 2016, BP agreed to pay $20.8 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in United States history."

[1] https://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

[gruez]

> The oil rig was owned by Transocean, but leased by BP.

Right, but "leased" in this context is closer to "leasing" a taxi than "leasing" a car. Transocean was described as the operator in news reports as well as on wikipedia. Also, most staff on the rig were not BP:

"A total of 126 workers were aboard. Seventy-nine were Transocean workers, six were BP employees and 41 were contracted."

>"In September 2014, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that BP was primarily responsible for the oil spill because of its gross negligence and reckless conduct. In April 2016, BP agreed to pay $20.8 billion in fines, the largest corporate settlement in United States history."

I'm not disputing BP's involvement/responsibility, just that it's at least somewhat justifiable to call it the "deepwater horizon oil spill" rather than the "bp oil spill", especially as the story was developing.

Also, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_accidents, it seems pretty common to call energy accidents based on the plant/ship name, rather than the company name. For instance, we refer to "Three Mile Island accident", not the "EnergySolutions (the operator) nuclear disaster". The Exxon Valdez oil spil was a notable exception, but that's because the oil tanker was literally named "Exxon Valdez".

[froh]

Sounds like the real full name was "BP deepwater horizon oil spill".

How much did transocean have to pay?

[pram]

It's literally in the first sentence of the wikipedia article my dude

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill (also referred to as the "BP oil spill")

[gruez]

>also referred to as the "BP oil spill")

I think you're missing the point. That fragment being present in the wikipedia article just means... wikipedia recognizes that some people also refer to the incident as the "BP oil spill". I have no problem with people wanting it to call it the "BP oil spill". It might even be the correct term. After all, in the final judgement BP was found 67% responsible. What I do have a problem with is the parent post's accusation that BP paid "media" to 'rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill"' for "good publicity" reasons. That's not supported by the evidence because news coverage referred to it as "Deepwater oil spill" and not "BP oil spill" from day 1, and that it's pretty common to not mention the company name in energy related accidents (see my other comment).

[lolinder]

That sentence says that it's been called both, not that BP conspired to make the second less popular.

[rapind]

Would it be "conspiring" or simply public relations? I ask because when you say "conspire" you could be alluding to it being unlikely that an oil company would have PR people on staff to "massage" their public image. I think we can all agree this sort of PR is pretty common, whether or not it happened in this case.

[lolinder]

I'm referring to this claim by the GP:

> Like paying media to rename the "BP oil spill" to "Deepwater oil spill".

That would fall beyond the purview of PR and squarely into bribery, and there's no evidence that it happened.

[rapind]

Oh I see. I didn’t notice that claim, and I agree with you. Imagine thinking that you “bribe” media. You just become a stakeholder or advertiser and exert pressure!

[tekknik]

It seems like BPs PR is at it here in this thread. Why does HN care so much about BPs image that they must clear it of any potential bribery claims?

[bryanrasmussen]

It definitely can't be just a PR move, because no company allows PR to throw away a $25B business, the management has to decide first and PR just spins the decision. Just imagine the board room discussion! Hey what happened to that 25 billion, oh PR thought it would be a good look for us if we lost it! Thumbs up!!

[onethought]

That's not how sanctions work. They aren't seizures, the assets just can't be moved. Long term sanctions (like Iran and North Korea) might feel like seizures, but technically if they were ever lifted the assets have to be returned.

Banks of course can pad their balance sheets with this stuff, so I guess that side is seized.

[Traster]

So, this is a bit confusing. Yes you're right that sanctions are just orders not to do business with certain companies, but one thing that Britain has up its sleeve is that ingeniously it spent the last decade luring Russian business men into buying expensive property and asssets in London under the clearly false pretense that they were safe from reprisal since they paid millions to the tory party (to be clear, I'm not slandering anyone, because they weren't corrupt as fuck, they were simply laying a trap) and now that we have them right where we want them we can use unexplained wealth orders to seize those assets - for example, expensive london flats, or the entirity of Chelsea football club, or Lord Lebedev's (good strong british name) Lordship (which definitely wasn't also bestowed upon him by the british government). Unexplained wealth orders basically say "Prove you got the money legitimately or this is ours now" - which is brilliant because we know they didn't get the money legitimately, because no one innocent pays millions of pounds to the tory party to protect themselves if they're innocent. Ipso facto, our corruption, literally a good thing.

Edit: Oh unless we actually are corrupt, and we don't actually carry out the unexplained wealth orders. Notably, the British government hasn't carried out any.

[gpderetta]

Brilliant! I'm sure that the new powers to strip people of their citizenship was planned all along to be used against russians oligarchs!

[selimthegrim]

I want to see the Guinness commercial for this.

[LudwigNagasena]

Wow, this is such a crazy take. The corrupt British government was sponsoring crazy Russian authoritarian regime and it is somehow a good thing?

[Xylakant]

Your sarcasm detector is in dire need of recalibration.

[Terry_Roll]

Everything is for sale in the UK.

[Dma54rhs]

There's definetly talk of seizures but as you said I don't know what it means in real world. Maybe they use the word but it's long term sanctions on some assets instead.

[msrenee]

Just anecdotal, I knew the name "Deepwater Horizon", but was very aware that BP was the responsible party. There was a lot of discussion of not buying gas from BP stations for a while afterwards and it became a common subject again when they started rebranding and painting their stations green.

Dunno what happened behind the scenes with the naming, but I'd say most people in my area associated it strongly with BP and am pretty confident that BP was implicated on the NPR radio station I listened to.