But on the other hand, the company is sitting on a pile of oil.

FORBES: What Forbes Readers Think About Brazil's Petrobras

Total already owns a pile of oil sands assets including 75% of the Joslyn mine, expected to give 200, 000 bpd, and a 50% piece of the Surmont project.

FORBES: Total Drops $1 Billion In Oil Sands Grab

The caisson could not simply be capped, because the oil pressure would blow its suction pile out of the sea floor.

ECONOMIST: Fixing oil wells

To make an oil-collecting caisson, such a pile would be used as a collar around a funnel-topped tube that would sit over the leak.

ECONOMIST: Fixing oil wells

For example, Exxon has refused to splurge on over-priced assets despite the huge cash pile it has thanks to high oil prices (a discipline not exercised by its smaller American rivals Chevron and ConocoPhilips, which are now gobbling up, respectively, Unocal and Burlington Resources).

ECONOMIST: Oil

With oil and gas prices rising, investors figured it was time to pile back in.

FORBES: To Russia With Love: Investors Flock to Russia, Not China & Brazil

When Frederick William John Augustus Hervey became the seventh marquess on the death of his father in 1985 he inherited a useful pile of possessions, including a 57, 000-acre sheep station in Australia and four oil wells in Louisiana.

ECONOMIST: The Marquess of Bristol | The