3 ms·

That would be interesting: if the govt required BP to "buy back" any oil the public can bring in, if it was easily tested to be of whatever quality, such as 50%

by tlack 16y ago

That would be interesting: if the govt required BP to "buy back" any oil the public can bring in, if it was easily tested to be of whatever quality, such as 50% oil:water mix. Let the public clean it up at ~$50/barrel - it's at $71/barrel now. It would be worth it for most people with a boat and probably higher revenue per hour than fishing.

jws 16y ago
To work the price would have to be many times the market rate to reflect the difficulty in gathering it. Then people would just cheat and just adulterate virgin crude. A barrel of oil is ~250 pounds. That's a bit of a beast to haul around for $50. You'd probably be better off gathering aluminum cans off the side of a highway at at $0.40/pound than oil at $0.20/pound. Might I suggest eastern Washington state? The two lane highways out there are the most littered I've seen anywhere in the nation. Good pickings.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Paying market rates, prorated for purity, would be the best thing, actually. It's in the collectors' best interest to come up with efficient collection methods to increase the margin between the cost to collect and the payout. It could be like a black gold, Texas tea, rush.
  - eru 16y ago
    But you can already get paid market rates. That's why they are called market rates. (Though maybe not at a scale of single-digit number of barrels.)
    - thwarted 16y ago
      Well, that's the opportunity -- you can't sell crude oil to just anyone, and most likely no one will buy crude that these kinds of small scales, so a bunch of smaller sellers get locked out of the market. A refinery has the process and equipment, but not the crude. And the purchaser potentially pays less than market rates based on difficulty of preparing the crude for refining if it isn't as pure as market rate oil is (because it contains sand, water, other ocean debris). People with ideas on how to clean it up get a chance to try out their ideas, with a possible payout to boot, without having to wait for Big Oil to get around to trying them.

by tlack 16y ago

jws 16y ago

To work the price would have to be many times the market rate to reflect the difficulty in gathering it. Then people would just cheat and just adulterate virgin crude. A barrel of oil is ~250 pounds. That's a bit of a beast to haul around for $50. You'd probably be better off gathering aluminum cans off the side of a highway at at $0.40/pound than oil at $0.20/pound. Might I suggest eastern Washington state? The two lane highways out there are the most littered I've seen anywhere in the nation. Good pickings.

thwarted 16y ago
Paying market rates, prorated for purity, would be the best thing, actually. It's in the collectors' best interest to come up with efficient collection methods to increase the margin between the cost to collect and the payout. It could be like a black gold, Texas tea, rush.
- eru 16y ago
  But you can already get paid market rates. That's why they are called market rates. (Though maybe not at a scale of single-digit number of barrels.)
  - thwarted 16y ago
    Well, that's the opportunity -- you can't sell crude oil to just anyone, and most likely no one will buy crude that these kinds of small scales, so a bunch of smaller sellers get locked out of the market. A refinery has the process and equipment, but not the crude. And the purchaser potentially pays less than market rates based on difficulty of preparing the crude for refining if it isn't as pure as market rate oil is (because it contains sand, water, other ocean debris). People with ideas on how to clean it up get a chance to try out their ideas, with a possible payout to boot, without having to wait for Big Oil to get around to trying them.