Motley Fool senior analyst Anand Chokkavelu explains the most shocking stat he's seen in all the BP (NYSE: BP) coverage.
Just one month before its April 20 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, BP claimed it could skim 491,721 barrels of oil a day in the event of a major oil spill.
So now that it's not merely a thought exercise, how much has it skimmed each day? 900 barrels.
That's less than 0.2% of its estimate.
Mathematically, it's the equivalent of estimating the United States is 6 miles long from coast to coast.
Yeah.
The two big lessons (that we should have already learned from the financial industry):
- Models are only as good as their inputs. We saw similarly screwy models when Wall Street claimed housing prices couldn't go down.
- Regulators shouldn't get too cozy with the regulated. The lack of oversight and, um, the extracurricular activities at the Minerals Management Service has been well documented. On Wall Street, Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), sits on the board of the New York Fed. And we all know about Goldman Sachs' (NYSE: GS) role as the finishing school for all higher-up government roles. (Read a laundry list of Wall Street-to-regulator moves here.)
As reform efforts continue in both the energy and financial sectors, let's hope we heed these lessons.
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