re: #38 lawhawk

$20 billion is a down payment on the damage, and will in no way be sufficient to compensate all those damaged by the oil spill. A 3d party administrator will probably be along the lines of the victim compensation fund set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to handle claims by victims of the attacks and run by Kenneth Feinberg.

He was again called on to administer the sick workers fund (once that gets approved by the members of the class). He also got called on to handle executive compensation following the Wall Street meltdown and ensuing hot air from Congress over executive pay.

Expect that Feinberg will be called on here as well. He’s real good at what he does and is generally seen as reasonable and fair in determining awards.

But to put the $20 billion in perspective, $20 billion is the amount that was thrown around in the days after 9/11 to pay for the rebuilding efforts. That severely underestimated the costs there too.

I’ve posted this before, but here it is again: impact on Louisiana alone.

The moratorium is a direct result of the incident.

The ban could cost Louisianans more than 10,000 jobs within a few months;
The state risks losing more than 20,000 existing and potential new jobs during a 12 to 18 month period, if the federal panel takes longer than six months to do their reviews and write their reports;
…
The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources estimates that an average of two supply boats per rig work every day with rates of $15,000 to $30,000 a boat, which means that suspension of drilling activity will result in a nearly $1 million loss per day in supply boat rental income. Each drilling rig job supports four other jobs in local communities.

Oil and gas production directly and indirectly supported $12.7 billion in household earnings in the state, representing 15.4 percent of total Louisiana household earnings in 2005;
The industry supported, directly and indirectly, more than 320,000 jobs and $70.2 billion in business sale in Louisiana in 2005

For the 2006 fiscal year, the oil and gas industry paid more than 14 percent of total state taxes, licenses and fees collected by the state of Louisiana;
This revenue amounts to more than $1.4 billion - a substantial portion of Louisiana’s budget;

Not all of this can be claimed, of course, so the state will have to eat losses that cannot be claimed.

Even so, $20 billion will come nowhere close to “making up” the losses here, much less losses in other states.