As gulf cleanup continues, BP will also struggle to clean up its brand

HOUSTON -- The protesters have stopped coming here to wave angry signs in front of BP's large office campus. The boycotts of BP gas stations are tapering off, too -- both signs that the energy company's plug of the spewing Gulf of Mexico oil well is quieting its loudest critics.

The shouting may be over, but rebuilding the company's badly tarnished brand will prove a much harder task -- one that advertising and oil industry experts say could be nearly as daunting as stopping the oil that gushed into the gulf for more than three months.

"It's probably the most notorious branding crisis in memory," said Tom Zara, director of corporate branding at Interbrand.

After the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in April, BP went on the air with television ads and bought a series of full-page ads in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal and other papers to position itself as an imperfect but responsible corporation committed to the cleanup of the gulf. The company has spent $55.8 million on television and print advertising so far this year, according to the Nielsen Co., which tracks ad spending. (The total for all of last year was $80 million.)

But as one of Washington's top corporate lobbying forces, BP took flak for paying lobbyists, so the company cut back that spending to only $3.3 million so far this year, compared with $8.2 million in the first six months of 2009.

BP has been bouncing back already in the place where its brand meets consumers -- at its gas stations. After the spill, sales dropped off 40 to 50 percent at some stations on the Gulf Coast, but in most cases business declines have leveled off to about 10 percent on the gulf and less than 5 percent in other parts of the country, said John Kleine, executive director of the BP Amoco Marketers Association, which represents the station owners.

Kleine, who calls the station owners "investors" in BP's brand (their only link with the company is contracts to buy gasoline), said they began facing angry protests after the spill and turned to BP for help. The company gave them signs and took out print and radio advertisements emphasizing that the stations were locally owned and operated. At some stations BP helped the owners do customer appreciation campaigns with free car washes and cups of coffee. Corporate staffers flew in to stand in driveways and listen to customers' concerns, Kleine said.

"Where the owner is known in the community, there is a less significant impact," Kleine said. "I think BP has to recognize that the local face is really a value to their brand even more so than anybody thought."

Company's evolution

BP, which began selling gasoline in Britain in the 1920s, has long been a company that cared a lot about its name -- and changed it several times. After it bought Amoco in 1998, the company British Petroleum to become BP Amoco, then two years later shortened it to BP, to signify that it was more than a petroleum company and emphasize its investments in alternative energy.

The company dropped the shield and torch that had represented British Petroleum and Amoco and adopted a logo called the Helios, which looks like a sunflower bursting with petals. BP says the design is named after the Greek sun god and represents "dynamic energy in all its forms."

The company's Web site declares that its brand can be summed up in two words: "beyond petroleum." Its executives have preached the importance of "social responsibility on a global scale" at major business conferences.

As British Petroleum, it won the support of some environmental groups in 1997 when it announced that it agreed with scientists that global warming stems from an excess of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases released through the burning of fossil fuels. It pledged to greatly increase its investment in solar power. Still, other environmentalists, including Greenpeace, called such investments a relatively insignificant part of the company's portfolio. In 2000, more than 10,000 students from seven Ivy League schools signed a pledge refusing to accept jobs at BP Amoco because the company had pursued permission to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

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Rising fuel prices putting everyone in a bind

NEW YORK - High fuel prices are putting the squeeze on drivers just as they are starting to feel better about the economy. They also are forcing tough choices on small-business owners, who are loath to charge more for fear of losing cost-conscious customers.

Gasoline prices rose 4 percent last week to a national average of $3.29 per gallon. That's the highest level to date for this time of year, when prices are typically low. And with unrest in the Middle East and North Africa pushing the cost of crude oil into the $100-a-barrel range, analysts say pump prices probably are headed higher.

Bryon Gongaware, an owner of the Floral Trunk and Gifts in White Bear Lake, Minn., didn't raise his $7 flower delivery charge when gas prices spiked in 2008, and he doesn't plan to do so this time, either.

"I don't think the economy is solid enough that you can be careless about raising prices," he said.

That means the extra costs that come from driving the store's delivery van 70,000 miles a year come from only one place: "Right out of the bottom line," he said.

For drivers such as Robert Wagner, 51, a high school teacher from Thornton, Colo., the higher fuel prices mean cutting back on movies and dinners out for him, his wife and their two children. "We're very, very frugal right now," he said as he trickled enough $3.09-per-gallon gasoline into his Chevrolet Suburban to get him to his next pay day.

Analysts and economists worry that by lowering profits for businesses and reducing disposable income for drivers, high gasoline prices could slow the recovering economy.

For a year, analysts estimate, oil at $100 a barrel would reduce U.S. economic growth by 0.2 or 0.3 of a percentage point. Rather than grow an estimated 3.7 percent this year, the economy would expand 3.4 percent or 3.5 percent. That probably would mean less hiring and higher unemployment.

Americans are less prepared to absorb the increase in gasoline prices than the last time they rose to this level, in 2008, because the unemployment rate is higher and real estate values are lower, said David Portalatin, an analyst for market research firm NPD Group.

It has been four months since gasoline was more than $3 per gallon. During that time, drivers have spent $14 billion more on gasoline than they did a year ago, Portalatin said.

Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago, said this year's cut in payroll taxes offers consumers a buffer against higher fuel prices. Still, she expects all but the wealthiest Americans to cut back on discretionary spending. And the longer prices stay high, the more damage they do.

Gasoline prices rose throughout last fall as the developing nations of Asia and the recovering economies of the West began using more oil.

In recent weeks, upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa stoked fears that oil supplies would be disrupted, and oil prices exceeded $100 per barrel for only the second time in history.

Much of the most dramatic unrest took place in countries that are not big producers of oil. But when Libya plunged into chaos, there were disruptions in shipments of its high-quality crude, which is well-suited to making gasoline. That sent refiners scrambling to find other sources of high-quality oil. Gasoline prices rose further.

Gasoline prices typically fall in the winter and rise in the spring as refiners switch to more expensive summer blends of gasoline. Since 2000, prices in May have been 52 cents per gallon on average higher than in February, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, believes that the normal seasonal rise in prices has been pulled ahead by events in the Middle East, but he still expects prices to rise further. He predicts prices will reach $3.50 to $3.75 per gallon, barring more chaos in the Middle East.

"When we get over $3.75 we are looking at very serious consequences for the economy," he says.

For every 25-cent increase in the price of gasoline, the nation spends an extra $3 billion filling up its cars and trucks, Kloza says.

For Jay Ricker, who owns 51 convenience stores in Indiana that sell gasoline under BP and Marathon brands, that's less money for the "affordable luxuries" he offers - cappuccinos and candy bars that people enjoy, but can do without. "I hate these high prices," he says. "People don't want to come in and buy something I make money off." Drivers often get angry when gasoline prices spike for reasons that aren't apparent, such as refinery problems or overseas demand for oil.

This time, though, the dramatic news reports from the Middle East are making customers more understanding, says Scott Hartman, CEO of Rutter's Farm Stores, which owns 56 convenience stores and gas stations near Harrisburg, York and Lancaster, Pa.

"Whenever you see chaos in the Middle East, people expect higher prices, and this has been more widespread than most of us have seen in our lifetimes," he says. "It's quite clear our customers know what's going on." That doesn't mean they like it.

When asked about fuel prices at a RaceTrac service station in Dallas, Shaun DuFresne tapped the screen on the pump, showing he had just spent $90.14 for diesel - at $3.50 a gallon - to fill his 2006 Ford F-250 pickup truck. Then he said something unprintable.

- Associated Press

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Academic scientists say oil from gulf spill is not going away quickly

Academic scientists are challenging the Obama administration's assertion that most of BP's oil in the Gulf of Mexico is either gone or rapidly disappearing -- with one group Thursday announcing the discovery of a 22-mile "plume" of oil that shows little sign of vanishing.

That plume was measured in late June and was described Thursday by scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. The biggest news was not the plume itself: For weeks, government and university scientists have said that oil from BP's damaged well is still underwater.

(Photos: The oil spill cleanup)

The news was what is happening -- or not happening -- to it.

The scientists said that when they studied it, they saw little evidence that the oil was being rapidly consumed by the gulf's petroleum-eating microbes. The plume was in a deep, cold region where microbes tend to work slowly.

"Our data would predict that the plume would still be there now," said Benjamin Van Mooy, a Woods Hole researcher.

(Gulf driller to light up cigar after job is done)

Their research came after a week in which other scientists had taken issue with the government's portrait of where all the oil went. On Thursday afternoon, Jane Lubchenco, the Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's administrator, defended the government's work, saying it was done by the "best scientific minds" and reviewed by outsiders.

(Transocean accuses BP of withholding data)

"We remain confident in our assessment," she said.

The Woods Hole research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Science, provided one of the most detailed pictures yet of what this oil is doing under the surface.

The scientists said that, using a robot submarine that zigzagged across the deep gulf, they found a plume of oil droplets that was as tall as a 65-story building and more than a mile wide. The plume, whose droplets were so small that the water appeared clear, extended off to the southwest of the well, 3,600 feet deep.

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Crisis in Egypt spurs fears of impact on global economy

Political turbulence in Egypt is casting a pall on world financial markets, driving up the prices of crude oil and food and creating new risks for the shaky world economy in the months ahead.

Oil prices on Monday reached their highest levels since 2008, and investors sold off both stocks and bonds of many developing nations, particularly in the Middle East. Those shifts came despite few signs that the Egyptian turmoil is having much direct impact on the world economy. Egyptian economic output is about the same size as that of Alabama, and while the country controls a crucial shipping channel, the Suez Canal, that key connector between Europe and Asia has so far remained open.

But the turbulence on financial markets shows how political upheaval in one place - first Tunisia, now Egypt - can set off hard-to-predict reverberations around the world, possibly undermining the global economic recovery. In this case, investors are most concerned that other Muslim nations, particularly those with autocratic leadership and vast oil reserves, will soon see their ruling regimes threatened as well.

"What's going on in Egypt has again reminded us that the world economy is not out of the woods, and that things we do not anticipate can have a significant negative effect on global markets and risk sentiment," said Rachel Ziemba, a senior analyst with Roubini Global Economics.

The economists' and investors' fear is that political developments could disrupt oil exports from Saudi Arabia or other nations, even temporarily. The price of oil rose to $92.19 on Monday, its highest level since October 2008, and up from $85.64 on Thursday, as investors priced in the higher probability of an interruption in oil supplies.

"There's not a huge risk to oil supplies from Egypt directly, but that could change if dissent spreads to other oil-exporting nations," Ziemba said. "The big issue is that the economic grievances present in Egypt are there across the Middle East. Will they spark unrest in the same way? It's hard to predict."

An analysis by economic consulting firm IHS Global Insight shows that every $10.70 increase in the price of crude oil, if sustained, would add 25 cents to the price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States and lead to 270,000 fewer jobs being created over the course of a year.

If political turmoil spreads further, it could undermine the confidence of investors in developing economies, which have been playing an increasingly important role. In recent years, investors have come to view developing nations as a potential source of high returns and relatively low risk, leading to a flood of investment into both major economies like China as well as "frontier" markets like those in sub-Saharan Africa.

"Now you have Tunisia, and Egypt and everybody is going to be a bit jittery. People will think twice. Stability can be a real mirage, as we have seen," said Todd Moss, vice president at the Center for Global Development.

Developments in Egypt could still prove encouraging. A smooth transition to a new government could pave the way toward further economic reforms. So far, Egypt has been adopting these reforms fitfully.

But this outcome is by no means assured. Egypt's last revolution, half a century ago, produced the widespread nationalization of private property under former president Gamal Abdel Nasser. Until the country's direction becomes clear, investors and business executives may move to the sidelines.

Moody's on Monday downgraded the country's investment standing, which will make it more expensive for Egypt to borrow money. Its stock market remains closed after dropping 16 percent in a day, and its $30 billion in foreign reserves could be stretched if the central bank decides it is necessary to try to prop up the value of a falling Egyptian pound.

International organizations also were trying to monitor more urgent concerns, such as whether the country has adequate supplies of wheat and other staples in reserve in the event that the current political paralysis continues. Egypt is heavily dependent on imports for these crucial products.

The greatest threat posed by Egypt's troubles for the global economy - absent a spread of popular revolt to other nations in the Middle East or beyond - is the disruption of shipping through the Suez Canal. But analysts are optimistic the canal will remain open, regardless of the fate of Hosni Mubarak's regime.

The Egyptian military "is aware of the importance of ensuring the smooth operation of the Suez Canal, which is not only a vital source of Egypt's foreign currency receipts, but also ensures the supply/movement of crude oil," said Ashraf Laidi, chief market strategist of CMC Markets in London.

irwinn@washpost.com schneiderh@washpost.com

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With BP's know-how and U.S. authority, the Macondo well was plugged

It was awkward from the start, this marriage of necessity between BP and the federal government. The government had ultimate authority; BP had the technology to plug the Macondo well. Something known as the National Contingency Plan called for a "unified command" in which government officials would issue orders and make pronouncements but BP would do the most crucial work and be the "responsible party."

People got confused. Who was in charge, really? The well kept gushing; everyone looked bad. Reporters asked top officials why the government didn't simply take over. But we're in charge already, the officials said.

The fact is, the two sides formed a team, weird as that might be at times. That is true today, still, with the Macondo well looking rather dead -- choked by a mile of cement -- but not yet terminated to everyone's satisfaction.

Government scientists and BP engineers have been devising a complex endgame. Before Macondo receives a conclusive dose of mud and cement at its base via a relief well, engineers want to take the old, damaged blowout preventer off the wellhead and replace it with a new blowout preventer. That will delay the "bottom kill" until after Labor Day, according to retired Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the national incident commander.

BP engineers and the government scientists come from different cultures. In general, the engineers want to plunge ahead, and the scientists want to go slower.

"We helped them see that there are dangers lurking here, and there and everywhere," Energy Secretary Steven Chu told The Washington Post. "The Department of Energy is in charge of the nuclear arsenal. . . . This is no messing around. In our culture, you want to make sure that nothing can go wrong."

The Obama administration has claimed credit for turning an uncontrolled calamity into something managed and mastered. The response to the disaster would have been different, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said after the well had been plugged with cement, had the administration not "pushed at every step of the way" for BP to "do things more comprehensively and faster."

BP has stayed clear of that debate.

"I've got a philosophy that when you're in the middle of the response, you stay focused on the response. When the response is over, that's a good time to analyze how the response went and decide what could have been done better," Kent Wells, BP senior vice president, said recently.

But the broader truth seems to be that BP and the government have overcome their natural antagonism to create a functioning partnership. The two sides had testy moments, but again and again they found a path to agreement. When Allen was asked whether a recent pressure test was conceived by the government scientists or the BP engineers, he replied: "It's hard to say anymore, we've been together so long. Some of these conversations start around the coffeepot."

The government needed BP because the company had the tools to plug the hole. BP benefited from the outsider perspective of government scientists and needed officials of the Environmental Protection Agency to run interference on such contentious issues as the use of chemical dispersants, a subject on which BP was viewed as having zero credibility.

Keeping everyone moving in the same direction has been Allen, perhaps the least-excitable person in American public life. Allen said in a recent interview that his goal was to "produce unity of effort" and added, "You can't do that by polarizing, or creating conflict, or getting caught up in a personal agenda or getting too excited about things."

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Development in once-rural areas put populations closer to natural gas pipelines

On Sept. 9, a 30-inch natural gas pipeline exploded in the suburban community of San Bruno, Calif., creating a 2,000-degree fireball that killed eight people, destroyed 37 homes and left more than 60 people injured. A gaping crater replaced homes at the center of the blast.

Could it happen here?

A pipeline rupture of approximately the same magnitude did occur not far from the Washington area a couple of years ago, but with less-dire consequences.

On Sept. 14, 2008, a 30-inch span of the Transco pipeline ruptured in Appomattox County, Va., creating a fireball that destroyed two homes and caused five injuries. Twenty-three families were evacuated.

The Appomattox explosion was larger than the explosion in San Bruno, but it occurred in a less-populated area, said Carl Weimer, executive director of the Pipeline Safety Trust, a watchdog organization based in Bellingham, Wash.

The Appomattox rupture was caused by corrosion of the 53-year-old pipeline, which had been inspected three months earlier by a "smart pig," a computerized scanning device that travels through a pipeline searching for dings, dents or corrosion, but had not yet been repaired. Transco's owner, the Williams Cos., paid the U.S. Transportation Department a $952,000 fine, replaced 2,500 feet of the pipeline, "smart pigged" all of its pipelines in Virginia, and performed pressurized water tests to validate the repairs.

Aging pipelines - and growing populations in the once-rural areas where pipelines were routed decades ago - have increased the risks associated with ruptures throughout the United States.

"The average transmission pipe is 50 years old," Weimer said. "If you put a steel pipe in the ground 50 years ago, you can have problems. It's not the same strength as steel today, and it doesn't have the anti-corrosive coating. But the more important factor is how the company has operated and maintained the pipes."

Some of the largest interstate pipelines in the United States run through the Washington area. The massive Transco pipeline, which consists of three and four parallel pipelines of 30 to 42 inches each, runs through Culpeper, Fauquier, Prince William, Fairfax, Montgomery and Howard counties on its way north from the Gulf of Mexico and shale resources in Alabama to supply natural gas up the East Coast to New York City.

One of the largest import facilities for liquefied natural gas in the United States is at Cove Point in Calvert County. Tankers travel up the Chesapeake Bay to deliver gas from abroad; from Cove Point it is distributed via transmission pipelines throughout the region.

Columbia Gas Transmission also runs major gas pipelines across the western edge of the metro area. Washington Gas taps into these resources with 200 miles of high-pressure transmission pipelines, which run through every county in the metro area and even beneath the Mall. The pipelines connect to a 26,000-mile web of smaller distribution pipelines, typically three-quarters of a foot to one foot in diameter, where the pressure is reduced so the fuel can enter homes and businesses.

Digging up trouble

The majority of pipeline incidents in the D.C. metro area, however, are not from the large transmission pipelines. In fact, there haven't been any incidents on the 20 miles of 24-inch transmission pipelines in the District (most of which date to the 1960s) "as far back as anyone can remember," said Betty Ann Kane, chairman of the D.C. Public Service Commission.

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Calibre 1.23.0

Manage your e-book library Calibre is program to manage your e-book collection. It acts as an e-library and also allows for format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer.

Calibre is program to manage your e-book collection. It acts as an e-library and also allows for format conversion, news feeds to e-book conversion, as well as e-book reader sync features and an integrated e-book viewer.
Calibre's features include: library management; format conversion (all major ebook formats); syncing to e-book reader devices; fetching news from the Web and converting it into ebook form; viewing many different e-book ...

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Music Manager 1.0.91.1050

A better way to play your music Upload your personal music collection to listen anywhere, keep everything in sync,
and forget the hassle of cables and files

Upload your personal music collection to listen anywhere, keep everything in sync,
and forget the hassle of cables and files.

The Music Manager is a desktop application that allows you to add your music to the cloud. After you have added tracks to the application, you will be able to listen to them on any device connected to the Internet.

Purple Parrot Music Stop is an easy-to-use program for playing your favorite music CDs and audio files (MP3s, WAVs, and other ... Stoffi Music Player is a new beautiful, integrated, compact & free music player. Stoffi focuses on consolidating the key features spread over various music players into one unified music player. It is ... Twister Music Player is a simple, easy to use audio player developed in the Java development language. This tool can ... Free music zilla, the first tool specialized for social music downloading, enables you download free mp3/music/song from imeem,last.fm,pandora,myspace and almost all social music services. Free Music Zilla - enables you ... The BMS Business Music System is a powerful hard disk based background music player suitable for environments such as hotels, casinos, ... Search for free online music. Listen to millions of online songs. Organize your music collection in a simplest way. In one place, ... Sprintbit Playlist Manager is a powerful playlist creator and manager with multimedia players. You can create playlist of ... MooSick is a free mplayer-based Music Player with a built-in Song Database, Websearch, Streaming ... of Video files and add them to your music database * Filters: Karaoke, "Live", Headphone, Compressor, Normalize, ... Google Music Player is a desktop client for Google Music that supports minimize to tray with a draggable ... ... Program has built-in mpeg video, Flash video and music player. With unique cell numbering that makes it very easy and fast to find programs, urls, music, video and photos. Over 15,000 storage spaces organized ...
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