No matter what your opinion of BP or Citgo is, not buying gas from branded stations does nothing to BP and Citgo. It only hurts the small business owners and ultimately the community around them. The little business can't pay taxes and pretty soon City Hall can't afford teachers and firefighters. That's the way it works. BP and Citgo will sell all their petroleum products. They'll sell to private label brands or worse, they'll ship American oil to China and Indonesia. BP will be paying billions for years for their mistakes for the next 30 years. Our best bet is to clean up the oil before it gets to land. The Feds need to quit worrying about offending the maritime unions an repeal the Jones act so Dutch and Saudi skimmers and tankers can help out in US waters. Fed regulations getting in the way of cleanup need to be suspended. A ship was delayed for 24 hours yesterday, waiting for the Coast Guard to check for sufficient life jackets on board! My point is that you need to apply your indignation to the things that are getting in the way of capture and cleanup.

I'm using local branded gas. I have no idea who's wells it came from.

 

Stop building cars because 35,000 people a year die in them.
Stop building airplanes because an airliner crashes every year or 2.
Stop building ships because one may sink.
Stop mining oil because every several decades there is a spill.
Stop mining coal because there may be a cave in.
Stop getting out of bed in the morning. You may fall down can not get up.

Not much of a life with out any risk at all. The saddest thing to see though is the pussification of once brave and noble people.

BP messed up. Hold their feet to the fire until they make it right. Then move on.

 

I love it man you said it all here. Gotta live life and when you mess up fix it and keep going.

 

Ah, but they did....

From what I can find this is what happened.

The well had been cemented 16-20 hours before the explosion;
this is where the gap between the drill hole and the well casing is
filled with cement.

After this cementing procedure, the drilling mud has to be
pumped out of the casing and into a tank ship so the plug can be
poured.

The captain of the tank ship indicated his tank was nearly filled
but this did not agree with how much mud would have been
pumped by the system (something is forcing it up).
Because of the offloading procedure, the systems that measure
the in vs. out flow balance are not operating as it would be in
'closed loop' drilling fluid situation. The first indication the drill
rig crew had of the well kicking back was this report of more drilling mud
in the tank ship than would have been moved by the drill rig pumps.

In a short but so far not definable amount of time, water came up the
well pipe soon followed by methane, when the crew cut the power the
emergency generators started and caused the initial explosion.



So a bad operational practice caused the problem....
Check this out...

It all comes up the same pipeline and all gets mixed in together.
The actual molecules are not owned by any one company until
it comes out of the pipeline at the refinery and the brand specific
additives are added. Then its BG gas.