valdez oil spill that changed their fate? that s exactly right. these are these were designed as fuel ships to carry jet fuel and diesel for navy fleet and after the exxon valdez spill, it was determined that single hulled ships were not appropriate for that use and so they were sent into into storage. no one could exactly figure out what to do. too much to retrofit them. no one can make a decision. so these ships just kind of sat there. look, the lesson is and anybody who has served in the military or covered the military can tell you this. as vital as it is, there is some waste. i mean, let s be honest about it. the government is not good at all about anticipating new technologies unlike the private sector. private sector is not always good at it either but congress is terrible at it and they made a massive mistake in this case. that s the lesson here. what s the fix? this is just we chalk this up to government lack of foresight or bad timing? well, let s just put it this w
right now? well, jessica, from the folks that we re talking to here on the ground, the greatest concern is the uncertainty about the future. we just don t know what s going to happen. now, there s mixed results and mixed response coming from folks in the tourism industry showing hopefully going into a strong spring. the recreational and commercial fishing industries are a mixed bag. the fishing season just opened up. we re halfway through the oyster season and they re concerned they re not finding the small baby young oysters. so it s really uncertainty about ways going to happen into the future. there are fish showing up with large lesions on them and depressed immune systems, not dissimilar to what happened in alaska during the exxon valdez oil spill with the herring population there which had depressioned immune systems and still hasn t recovered 20 years later. so clearly seeing effects on the wildlife.
maximum figure so the company s responsibility isn t completely open ended but b.p. has been rather vague about exactly what its responsibility is. a spokesperson said after the speech last night we share the president s goal of shutting off the well as quickly as possible. cleaning up the oil and mitigating the impact on the people and the environment of the gulf coast. we look forward to meeting with president obama for a constructive discussion about how best to achieve these mutual goals. now, if there is no agreement and things wind up in court, it could take considerably longer for the people of the gulf to get paid. and they could be conceivably paid less. the final claims from the 1989 exxon valdez oil spill are just now being resolved. and a judge actually cut the punitive damages in that spill from $2 1/2 billion to $500 million. we ll find out how much of a meeting of the minds there is early this afternoon when the president speaks to the press but he has left time for hi
actually quite specific about the steps we were going to take to make sure that people down on the coast are made whole and that b.p. pays what they owe to organize the cleanup of the spill and also the cleanup of the problems that led to it in terms of the oversight here in washington. and to talk about what the future should hold in terms of our energy policy. i think people got a very clear sense of what the president of where he s going to go, of who is going to lead those efforts and how we re going to proceed. yeah, i definitely agree with you on that, that he did lay out how he plans to proceed from here. a lot of people are asking this morning, with all due respect, mr. axelrod. how are we going to plug the hole? how are we going to do it? well, he dealt with that as well last night. obviously, this is why the war analogy holds unlike a tornado or a hurricane or a crash. this was not a one off disaster. this is an ongoing disaster because you have a leak a mile below the
drilling to resume and he s saying no way. that s 20,000 jobs in louisiana on hold. minimum. that s royalties not being earned on that money we were taking out. 33 platforms. yes, 33 platforms not earning that royalty money. that s oil taken off the market. wholesale, negative what is he getting at with that? it s politics. he s demonizing b.p., seizing their assets to divert attention from the delay in dealing with the spill. so if you re exxon, if you re any of these other major companies, shell, why would you take the risk of going to the gulf? well, you wouldn t, would you? if your liability is uncapped, unlimited liability for any accident whatever, why do you drill in the first place? right. you don t. we know why they drill in the deep water, environmentalists pushed them out from the shallow water. that s why we re not drilling in alaska, not drilling in the shallow water. we ve been pushed out in the deep water where it s difficult