It might be nice if, once in a while, all the facts were known before the bashing began. I know we live in a world where it’s convenient to look for someone to blame and, right now, the US appears to be it. However, let’s be fair. 40% of BP’s assets are within the boundaries of the United States – that’s almost half, and a large percentage of BP’s stock is American owned. That means those assets and that stock falls under America’s protection. I’m a BP stockholder. When the disaster struck, that stock dropped through the floor. There was a great deal of concern about pensioners all over the world who depended on the dividends paid by that stock and on the value of that stock for their security.
Now, like it or not, Obama does not control BP. Neither does the United States Congress. They can investigate the explosion in the Caribbean all they want to and reach whatever conclusions they want to, but they cannot force a corporation to change its leadership. BP stockholders elected a new president and they elected an American. Why, because they recognized that in order to stabilize the market value of what they owned, they would have to assure the world that those 40% of its assets were stable. They did. Stock, which had dropped from $62.38 a share to $26.75 a share is now back up to $41.36 a share. That’s not Obama’s action, that’s BP’s action. BP recognized a problem and acted to control it.
As to the crisis in the Caribbean, it is a disaster of such magnitude as to defy description. The economies of five states and a dozen or more nations have experienced drastic and long-term effects. Certainly the United States Congress has the right to investigate it and to subpoena whomever it chooses to interview. Obama has the responsibility to represent 275 million Americans in this process and he is doing so. It is not a pleasant duty nor likely to be perceived as such.
Where does his right to request foreign nationals to participate in such an investigation come from? Well, there was a ship: The Torrey Canyon. It was built in the US, registered in Liberia, owned by Barracuda Tanker, and chartered to British Petroleum. Carrying 120,000 gallons of petroleum, on March 18, 1967 it struck a reef off the coast of the Cornish mainland. It was the first major oil spill in the world. Some 50 miles of French coast and 150 miles of Cornish coast were contaminated. 15,000 birds and all fish were killed within 270 square miles. In Cornwall they simply plowed the oil under the sand with bulldozers. The RAF dropped 42 bombs onto the oil slick, a fourth of them missed.
How did the British government serve it’s writ on British Petroleum for the damages incurred? It flew to Singapore and had the Torrey Canyon’s sister ship, Lake Palourde, seized. France tried to do the same thing but the Palourde outran them. The British agent got on board by telling the crew it was a whiskey salesman. It was a lot of international intrigue and international law was created. The disaster led to many changes in international regulations, for example the Civil Liability Convention (CLC) of 1969 was established creating the authority to investigate. It was done on behalf of the UK.
Of course, up until now, the worst at sea disaster was Piper Alpha at $1.6 billion. In it roles were reversed. Occidental, an American company, operated a platform in the North Sea. On July 6, 1988 it exploded, killing 167 men. Total insured loss was about £1.7 billion (US$ 3.4 billion. You can calculate the amount in 2009 dollars). At the time of the disaster the platform accounted for approximately ten percent of North Sea oil and gas production, and was the worst offshore oil disaster in terms of lives lost and industry impact.
The Cullen Inquiry was set up in November 1988 to establish the cause of the disaster. In November 1990, it concluded that the initial condensate leak was the result of maintenance work being carried out simultaneously on a pump and related safety valve. The enquiry was critical of Piper Alpha's operator, Occidental, which was found guilty of having inadequate maintenance and safety procedures. But no criminal charges were ever brought against it. The second phase of the enquiry made 106 recommendations for changes to North Sea safety procedures, all of which were accepted by industry. The disaster led to insurance claims of around US$ 1.4 billion, making it at that time the largest insured man-made catastrophe. The insurance and reinsurance claims process revealed serious weaknesses in the way insurers at Lloyd's of London and elsewhere kept track of their potential exposures, and led to their procedures being reformed. All of these inquiries were made by British councils and government institutions. Americans testified at all of them.
I’m not advocating anything. I’m just saying I don’t believe we’ll know all the facts until all the facts are known. It will be a long time before anybody can say what happened with that well with any certainty. It’s going to take a lot of house cleaning on both sides of the Atlantic because there is blame enough to be shared. Rest assured, no single individual is responsible. This is not a case where Pastrengo Rugiati was taking a shortcut and struck a reef as he did with the Torrey Canyon. In terms of its effect on the environment, the conclusions are still unreached.
The 1962 Centralia Coal Mine Fire in Pennsylvania is still burning. Chernobyl in 1982 exposed 600,000 to radiation and it may be a hundred years before we know the full impact.
And, of course, in 2005, the third largest refinery in the United States blew up in a suburb of Houston, that’s 5.7 million people exposed to 18,354,000 gallons of exploding petroleum. It was also owned by British Petroleum. Strangely, Lord Browne, the head of BP at that time, was forced to resign and Tony Hayward took over. Now, with the April disaster, Hayward is out and Dudley is in. I really don’t think Obama had anything to do with either of the changes. The stockholders of BP did, through their elected Board of Governors.
It’s all right to criticize the United States. We do a lot of things badly. We stick our noses where they don’t belong. We express opinions where we have no right nor reason to express them and we meddle in things in which we lack the justification to do so. But sometimes we’re in our own backyard minding our own business and others do the same to us.
O’Bama is not perfect nor has every decision of his been a wise one but think where we could be now: we could be at the bottom of this hole with privatized social security, a collapsed banking system, no end in sight to the Middle East, absolutely no health care of any sort, no taxes on corporations of any kind, and a superdome full of shit.
Instead we have a revived banking system which has already paid back its loans, the beginnings of guaranteed health care, a start to a pullout from the war, Social Security that is still being paid, an end to the horrendous Bush tax cuts, and Memphis and Nashville are on their way back in September from disasters in May. And, for the first time in a century heterosexual divorce rates went down in a state in which gay marriage is legal. I’d say some things are going right. (That last thing has nothing to do with government, but the radical right has made such a todo about so called moral decline, I think their faces need to be shoved in their own pile for a while.)
I didn’t write this to debate anyone or to argue any points. I just wanted to put my position in perspective. I’m sure there are those who will rip it to shreds simply because I wrote it. That’s their privilege.
I seem to remember a story from elementary school that makes my point here. "I Know and Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly."
