Professor Michael Wara is quoted on the possibility of government imposed sanctions against BP as a consequence of the Gulf Coast oil spill.Jeff Brady of NPR reports:

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is going to cost BP billions of dollars to clean up, but the company could lose something worth even more — the right to drill in the Gulf in the future.

Some are calling on the government to take away BP's right to bid on federal oil leases. Others want BP restricted from bidding on federal contracts. And still others want a huge fine levied against the energy giant.

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Michael Wara, an environmental law professor at Stanford University, has examined all of the arrows in the government's quiver and reached a different conclusion. "The appearance of cracking down, I think, might best be accomplished by making BP pay a large dollar sum," Wara says.

That's a penalty the average person can easily understand. Wara says all of those other sanctions could be used as leverage, then dropped to get BP to agree to the figure without a lengthy court battle.