By Static Chaos

After busy making several outrageous comments regarding BP and the Gulf oil spill as recent as last evening, Matt Simmons abruptly announced today that he would retire from the board of Simmons & Co.–the company he founded in 1974–effective June 30.

Meanwhile, Simmons & Co. also issued a statement in an apparent attempt to distance itself from its founder.  As Houston Business Journal reports:

“..on June 14, [Simmons & Co] issued a statement dated May 12 in which [CEO Mike Frazier] distanced himself from the founder, saying that the former chairman’s views were not those of Simmons & Co. Frazier referred to Simmons’ comments related to the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and the implications for the industry and the individual companies.”

You might recall in a Bloomberg interview on May 28, Matt Simmons endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable solution for the oil spill.  later on, BP shares slid to a 14-year low, around the same time Fortune magazine (on June 9) quoted Simmons as saying BP had a month before it would file for bankruptcy.  As recent as last evening in a CNBC interview (at around 6-minute mark) Simmons also intimated that the Gulf oil leak was at 120,000 bpd, instead of the official estimate of 60,000 bpd.

Continue reading Matt Simmons Is Shorting At Least 8,000 BP Shares