I’ve been doing more work for Agence France Presse on the oil spill. This first story broke yesterday, but my favorite quote got excised: “One of the biggest direct effects of the trials being held in New Orleans is going to be on the city’s economy,” said Martin Davies, law professor at Tulane University. “New Orleans hotels will be full of lawyers for years now.”

This second story has been ongoing over the past week ever since BP capped the flow of oil into the Gulf. Calling BP’s Houston press office is a bizarre experience. The people who pick up the phone are able to give quote, but they rarely give their names. “Just call me a spokesperson if you have to,” they’ll say. Or they speak in deliberately obtuse sentences that are impossible to quote. On this story I simply asked “is BP going to be involved in the salvage operation?” “You’ll have to speak to Transocean, they own the rig,” said the spokesperson. “So you’re denying that BP is going to be involved in the salvage operation?” I asked. “I’m not denying anything. You’ll have to speak to Transocean because they own the rig.” “So, how can I reflect BP’s involvement in the salvage operation?” “You’ll have to speak to Transocean.” “So, BP referred all questions on the salvage to Transocean, even though BP is likely to be involved in the operation?” “I never said that. You’ll have to speak to Transocean.” “Okay. Do you have a contact at Transocean?” “I think they have a website.”

Ultimately, I’ve had to confirm facts about BP by asking third parties and legal experts. Transocean was hardly a bucket of joy to deal with on the phone, either, but at least they did have someone call me back to ask what I was writing about. And the director of communications sent two five-word responses, via email, to my questions. Again, badly punctuated so they’ll be impossible to quote. These firms have learned how to do defensive public relations. I can respect it.

Again, I quoted Martin Davies at Tulane’s maritime law center on this story. This time, his quote remained. I guess any time you say “gazillion dollars,” you’ve got it made. Davies also told me yesterday that he’s being asked to supply consulting advice to hedge firms on the disaster — for a fee, of course — because they’re all trying to decide whether to go long or short on these companies. Here’s that quote:

“I think they may actually have some kind of benevolent purpose in salvaging the evidence from the Gulf floor as well, to ensure that this doesn’t happen again,” Davies said. ”I’m sure if they find out that there’s some simple fix that they could have installed, then they would want to do that again so that they don’t have another gazillion dollars worth of liability.”