Posted on 07/16/2010 9:40:44 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
After busy making several outrageous comments regarding BP (BP: 37.48 -1.44 -3.70%) and the Gulf oil spill as recent as last evening, Matt Simmons abruptly announced today that he would retire from the board of Simmons & Co.–the company he founded in 1974–effective June 30.
Meanwhile, Simmons & Co. also issued a statement in an apparent attempt to distance itself from its founder. As Houston Business Journal reports:
“..on June 14, [Simmons & Co] issued a statement dated May 12 in which [CEO Mike Frazier] distanced himself from the founder, saying that the former chairman’s views were not those of Simmons & Co. Frazier referred to Simmons’ comments related to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the implications for the industry and the individual companies.”
You might recall in a Bloomberg interview on May 28, Matt Simmons endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable solution for the oil spill. later on, BP shares slid to a 14-year low, around the same time Fortune magazine (on June 9) quoted Simmons as saying BP had a month before it would file for bankruptcy. As recent as last evening in a CNBC interview (at around 6-minute mark) Simmons also intimated that the Gulf oil leak was at 120,000 bpd, instead of the official estimate of 60,000 bpd.
Being a devil’s advocate, my suspicion only grew each day when Simmons seemed to have become increasingly “passionate” about preaching the worst possible outcome and solution (a nuke bomb? come on!) to this unprecedented disaster.
Well, say it isn’t so, but according to Barron’s,
“Simmons has a 4,000-share short sale on BP that he picked up when the stock hit $37. That’s in addition to a prior 4,000-share short sale he made at $48 a couple weeks prior. “It’s going to zero,” he says of BP stock. Mind you, Simmons has an interest and a deep investment in moving beyond fossil fuels.”
The Barron’s article went on to note that Simmon’s Ocean Energy Institute, a renewable energy think-tank and venture capital fund he started in 2007, is involved in a project to develop off-shore wind power facilities and other alternative energies.
If Barron’s assertion is true, it would appear that Simmons, an energy industry veteran and expert, could have had a serious conflict of interest when he went onto so many TV and magazine interviews talking his book about BP and the Gulf oil spill.
From that perspective, his remarks would seem irresponsible and only added to the existing despair and chaos, which is nothing the nation, particularly the Gulf Coast residents, need right now.
One has to wonder if this potentially unethical and maybe illegal act could have been easily deterred if only the media would require a disclosure before putting Simmons on TV and quoting him?
BP's Deepwater Oil Spill - Results as the Testing Begins - and Open Thread
Big Ammonia is the next Big Oil.
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I believe that Simmons has made appearances on MSNBC in July.
Todays TOD has a poster rpclarke defending Simmons comments about the Oil Leak occuring some 5 or 6 miles away from the site where we view ROV's operating.
I think all of the reports from the Dooms Day crowd are going to require a substantial effort to counter...their profits are considerable.
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One such story :
Gulf Oil Cover Up: Underneath Gaping Chasm of Gulf Floor is a Mt Everest Sized Cavern
And another:
Why BP is Readying a 'Super Weapon' to Avert Escalating Gulf Nightmare
fyi
Had not heard about that.
Wow, a whole 8000 shares short. For this guy this is worthy of a yawn.
but it is easy to hide info on shorting ...as I understand it.
Now the writer Terrence Aym seems to pick up change from supplying sensational news to the various media outlets.
A Black Swan in more ways than One. The Gulf Mega Disaster
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What BP achieved was to drill down about 5 Miles into the Earths Crust, under thousands of feet of Ocean. When the Drill finally penetrated the cavity containing the Oil the pressures they encountered were on the order of 60,000 PSI added to that the pressure of the water above another 22,000 PSI for a Total of 70 to 80 Thousand PSI. (A Car Tire has 30 PSI, a Gas Bottle about 100 PSI Max. Hence the difficulties in capping the Well. Imagine trying to push Drilling Mud or Cement down against these pressures pushing back.
Hence all efforts to Cap it have failed, the best they can do is put a “Funnel” over the top and pump as much as you can into a surface ship. Judging by the numbers of Tankers they have not been overly successful even in this. Images of Crack and Fissures breaking open in places away from the Drill Head have been seen. When BP broke into that cavity it landed on a new Planet, a place of impossible pressures, Temperatures and Chemistry.
Soundings have detected a 20 Mile wide ‘Dome’ tens of feet high forming around the Drill Head. This is a giant compressed (80,000 PSI) bubble of Gas and other muck. A very real fear of this bubble reaching a point of bursting and releasing a cloud of Toxic Gas across the lower SE United States. Rainfall containing Toxins from the Oil and from the Dispersant “Correctcit” (Spelled wrong …Corrects it.) A great label for a very toxic substance, apart from Benzene, Hydrogen Sulfide and a dozen others. A Hurricane in the Gulf this year that will cross the Gulf , pick up the Ocean and dump it across the Coastal Cities would be the equivalent of a Chemical Warfare attack on the USA. The chance of a Hurricane of Force 3 to 5 hitting somewhere this season is 100% or as close as you can get. That’s probably one of the few certainties we can be sure of.
This entire event from start till present has been a ‘Whitewash’ / Suppression / Downplay / Spin of Media and Govt. Apart from telling the World the truth (That there is a probability of not being able to Cap the well, even using Nukes is a consideration to ‘Pinch Off’ the well.) We have an Event in motion that threatens the Planet. Its that serious.
Investors should start thinking in terms of BP’s Derivative Exposure and the Counter Parties who will be left hold the Bankrupt Bag, It will cost Hundreds of Billions of Dollars to clean this up, the area (Thousands of miles of coast, fishing, Tourism, the living space of Millions of people. ) People will soon come to their own correct assumption that this is an Oil Chernobyl, in fact Chernobyl would be an easier fix.
Matthew Simmons, founder of the Ocean Energy Institute, has taken a vision of a post oil-dependent world and put it into action. The Ocean Energy Institute plans to put offshore wind power, and midcoast Maine, on the global front edge of energy exploration and development. photo courtesy ocean energy institute
First pic of Ole Matt I’ve seen. He even LOOKS like a kook.
From Wikipedia:
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Matthew Simmons, founder and chairman emeritus of Simmons & Company International, is a prominent oil-industry insider and one of the world's leading experts on the topic of peak oil. Simmons was motivated by the 1973 energy crisis to create an investment banking firm catering to oil companies. In his previous capacity, he served as energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush.
Matthew Simmons believes the Club of Rome predictions are more accurate than usually acknowledged [1]. Simmons is an adviser to the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre. He is a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations. He believes a careful assessment of Saudi Arabian oil reserves is the most significant issue shaping petroleum politics.
Simmons is the author of the book Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy. His examination of oil reserve decline rates helped raise awareness of the unreliability of Middle East oil reserves as the published reports have never been verified.
For links go to Wikipedia....
That must be some special kind of water.
I don't know about the oil pressure down below, but my scuba training taught me that it's 1 atmosphere for every 33 feet you go down.
5000 feet / 33 feet = 151.5 intervals = 152.5 atmospheres = 2227 PSI.
NOT 22,000.
Yep. I figured he had an interest and mentioned my suspicions on several blogs.
However, his sensationalistic commentary was useful, I think, for other, various, vested interests.
Shameful. There should be disclosures for anyone discussing investments. And they should just out with it.
When it is an obvious short sale situation- rather than long held shares in a portfolio, maybe the ‘expert’ should just keep their mouth shut.
Well if the writer was good at math he might have a real job....(snarky comment).
WTF? If anything the water weight counters the flow rate pressure. ANOTHER crap article.
fyi
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According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.”[2]
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