成人头条

June 15, 2010

This WSU Newsline Podcast is available at . See the transcript below:

You鈥檙e listening to the podcast edition of the 成人头条 audio newsline. Learn more about WSU 鈥� the home of Thinkers, Doers, Movers and Shockers 鈥� on the web at .

The ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has attracted extensive publicity for its environmental impact, but the economic cost of the disaster is expected to be great as well. 成人头条 economist Jim Clark says the economic cost is hitting the Gulf Coast states especially hard.

Clark: "The Gulf oil spill right now is mostly affecting the states around the Gulf. The fishing industry is pretty much on hold, nobody is allowed to catch much of anything. And tourism is starting to be affected as oil is washing up on the beaches in Florida."

The whole of the Mexican Gulf coastline is an attraction to tourists. Wetlands attract those with environmental interest, beaches attract sun-worshippers, and the coast offers widespread opportunities for active sports. All of these are threatened by the spread of oil. One estimate puts the value of tourism to the Gulf Coast at $20 billion. In Louisiana, the figures suggest an approximate annual visitor figure of around 24 million, with expenditure of $8.5 billion, supporting more than 100,000 jobs. Clark says BP is taking the biggest hit financially for having to clean up the spill.

Clark: "BP is taking a big hit from the cleanup. They're going to end up paying for everything. Fortunately, the way the laws are written, the rest of us won't have to see our taxes go up to pay for the cleanup."

And Clark says BP can afford to pay the cleanup costs.

Clark: "BP is a big company. They can afford to pay all of these costs. It's not going to put them out of business in the long run, but the longer the well keeps spewing oil, the more money they're going to have to pay to get it cleaned up."

As for the long-term effect of the oil spill, Clark had this to say:

Clark: "Long-term effects on most of us in the U.S. are going to be: seafood's going to be more expensive and harder to find for probably several years. We may see a little bit more expensive oil products because we've stopped, for the moment anyway, drilling for oil. And we're probably not going to go back to as much drilling as we planned on over the next several years, so gasoline's going to be a little scarcer."

According to Clark, the public seems to be mad at both the government and business over the oil spill.

Clark: "Right now we all seem to be mad at both Washington and business for letting this happen and not being able to fix it. A long-term question is, what is the attitude toward business going to be? Is this going to create a lot of new expensive regulations that we're all going to have to pay for?"

Clark says he doesn't expect the oil spill to have much of a direct effect on Kansans.

Clark: "Kansas isn't going to see much of any direct effect of this. We will see probably higher prices for seafood. We may see some impact in the long term on what we do with regulation of businesses as a result of the spill."

The bottom line is that the long-term impact of the oil spill is still unknown, as Clark explains.

Clark: "We've really got no idea what the total long-term impact is going to be. It depends on how fast they can get the well plugged up and the spill stopped. If the hurricane season interferes with that, it may keep running away for several months. That's going to keep on increasing the cost that BP has got to pay in order to get it all cleaned up."

As oil seeps into Louisiana marshlands, economists say the financial fall-out is only just beginning to spread across the Gulf of Mexico 鈥� and possibly beyond. Even if BP teams succeed in capping the undersea gusher, the economic damage could drag on for years, depending on how much oil actually lands ashore and how extensive the damage is to Gulf fisheries.

The longer the incident lasts, and the farther the oil spreads, the greater will be the impact on the three industry sectors of oil, fishing and tourism.

Thanks for listening. Until next time, this is Joe Kleinsasser for 成人头条.