They likely sold their stock, not becasue they foresaw the disaster, but because they had sunk millions into this well and they knew there was a huge oil deposit there, but they knew they needed to shut down the well.
Shutting down that operation would cost them money because the stock would have dropped a fair bit on the news that they would not have these new earnings.
Sell high, buy low.
Basically, this was legal insider trading. But, they KNEW of the difficulties being encountered and the impending loss.
Someone at BP made a decision to go forward on this well. THAT person is who BP is protecting OR selling out.
And if I were a betting man, BP cut a deal at the White House that will serve the underlings up to the Feds but insulate the higher ups. Also, if I were a betting man, BP has been cleansing BP corporate of any traces of evidence that they knew what was up.
This wasn’t a shake down, it was a deal. Heyward traded BP middle managers and the shareholder for his freedom and personal liability.
This wasn’t a shake down, it was a deal. Heyward traded BP middle managers and the shareholder for his freedom and personal liability.
Exactly. BP and the Regime are conjoined twins on this whole rotten thing.
Under the Bush administration BP was revealed as the vilest safety/environmental criminal among all the oil companies, having been convicted of a felony arising from the 2005 explosion of its Texas City, TX refinery that killed 15 people and of a misdemeanor for inadequate maintenance of an Alaska pipeline that burst, causing a 200,000 gallon spill. It was on probation for both of those offenses at the time of the Oilspill. In addition, it received 760 OSHA citations for serious violations in the three years preceding the Oilspill, while Conoco, its nearest runner up, only received 8.
All of that put BP in the position of desperately needing official protection for its sloppy operations, which it got by heavily contributing to the 2008 Obama campaign, spending something like $12,000,000 with Stanley Greenberg's PR firm, the most heavily connected of the DemonRat lobbying outfits, and becoming the great corporate leader from the oil industry in the decapitate and tax hysteria. All of these dubious activities got it special administration favor and carte blanche to drill as it chose, safety rules be damned. Then, SURPRISE!!!, the well blew up.
At that point the conjoined twins, BP and the Regime, found it vital to put on a charade to keep people from asking the about their bribery/improper influence conspiracy that led to the blowout. Hence, the ridiculous spectacle at the White House where Obama, the lead conspirator, got his co-conspirators at BP to pay the amount for remediation and compensation that they'd already planned to pay, the only difference being that it would be paid to an Obama stooge to distribute. All of this was for no other purpose than to create a fake impression of an adversarial relationship between the co-conspirators and avoid a serious investigation of what happened, an investigation that would, IMHO, reveal impeachable bribery.