Gulf Oil Spill
Dear All.
It seems that a lot of shouting is being done about the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico giving their tuppence worth on the event and so I feel I would like to too.
The spill is a tragedy on a massive scale. Not only have a large number of people lost their lives but a very large area of habitat on the west coast of the US is in danger and already countless animals and plants will have been killed.
People seem to be screaming that BP should be taken over by the US govt as they can’t handle the spillage. BP has already gone to all other oil companies operating in the gulf and borrowed any equipment suitable for controlling such an issue. Most worrying is the fact that none have such equipment and BP, though poorly prepared, was best prepared for such an incident.
This spill was not created by BP but instead by a series of other companies. What BP has done is put its head above the parapet and stated that as they were funding the operation, they will take full responsibility. Why is no one blaming the rigs owner (transocean), the operator (Halliburton), the US administration for licensing the operation, the US administration which approved the safety shut downs or even the manufacturers of the safety equipment?
The clean up costs are going to be massive and BP has said it will foot the bill. Sadly this is putting a financial value onto environmental degradation and to a large extent this is impossible. The money will instead largely go to businesses that are damaging the area (to varying extents) through fishing, farming and tourism.
It is strange that the US administration is going to look to have no one out of pocket for this disaster with the 10th anniversary of the Bopal disaster just the other day. Though hundreds died and many thousands were injured and many hundreds of thousands now live within the contaminated (and it still is) area and suffer birth defects the US negotiated the compensation down to $20million and is actually still to pay half of this.
So sorry for this rant but can we have a bit of common sense with regards this issue. BP and all the other companies involved in this issue, including the licensing authorities should foot the bill for the clean up. What we need is an organisation to ensure that all that can be done is being done, that sufficient funds are available to fund these operations and also to compensate where business has been damaged and also someone to put in place better risk assessments which are tried in practice rather than in theory! Can the CSC please step in??
June 15th, 2010 at 10:15 am
This entire toxic scenario is frightening……
Did You Know?
BP engineers alerted federal regulators at the Minerals Management Service that they were having difficulty controlling the Macondo well (Deepwater Horizon) six weeks before the disaster, according to e- mails released by the Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I don’t think this would have happened on Exxon’s watch,” Tom Bower, author of “The Squeeze: Oil, Money and Greed in the 21st Century,” said in a June 11 Bloomberg Television interview. “They’d be much more careful and much more conscious of the need to supervise subcontractors.”
WELL excuse me your sainted Exxon……. and Chevron and ConocoPhillips.
Let’s just take a look at a few of your past misdemeanours, and then we can consider again – if the moratorium on deepwater drilling should be lifted, and place it all firmly back into your nice clean hands!
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/06/fairy-stories-about-oil-companies.html