The Daily Mail UK
written by Richard Pendlebury
Last updated on June 18, 2010 at 8:08am
Last night Obama bullied BP into setting up a £13bn fund to compensate U.S. oil spill victims. Yet it's American firms that owned the rig AND the safety equipment that failed.
On Capitol Hill, Washington DC, at 10am local time this morning, the boss of the world's fourth largest company will take his seat before a sub-committee of American congressmen.
The inquisition that follows will be beamed around the globe. And if events of past weeks are a guide, BP chief executive Tony Hayward can expect a cross between the Battle of Bunker Hill and a Salem Witch trial.
Anger is understandable. Officially, today's hearing is slated to investigate 'the role of BP in the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico'.
But one word that is likely to be invoked repeatedly with a pejorative tone, and with a cynicism that is in inverse proportion to its actual relevance, is the adjective 'British'.
A decade has passed since the oil-producing giant changed its name from British Petroleum to BP, better to reflect its modern, multinational structure, rather than more parochial origins.
But, listening to President Barack Obama, you would think this wasn't the case. For he seems to have chosen to live in the past, as does his press spokesmen and a number of key Democrat allies.
If their public utterances are anything to go by, the company to blame and be held to account for anything up to $34 billion of clean-up and compensation costs is British Petroleum, not BP.
By stressing the word 'British', the Obama administration, whose own role in the oil spill is also subject to critical scrutiny, has chosen to present America's worst environmental disaster as being foreign, specifically British, inflicted.
This week President Obama even compared the spill to the 9/11 attacks, the most recent assault on the American homeland by external enemies. That analogy caused dismay even in the States.
However, close analysis of the parties involved in the accident on the rig on April 20, which claimed 11 lives and continues to pump huge amounts of crude oil into the Gulf, tells a somewhat different story.
It takes us from the tiny capital of the Marshall Islands in the West Pacific through Japan and Switzerland and the patrician environs of St James's in Central London, an address which has been the focus of Obama's populist politicking.
Last night BP bowed to the intense pressure from the American government and agreed to set aside £13.5 billion ($20bn) to pay U.S. claims for the catastrophe.
Yet what is inescapable is how the accident itself was and is very much an American affair.
The United States is the world's biggest and most oil-greedy economy.
With its love of petrol-hungry cars and other energy-greedy symbols of a vibrant consumer culture, it needs the fossil fuel like a newborn infant craves milk.
Every day the U.S. gobbles up 20 million barrels; more than any other country - in fact almost as much as the rest of the top ten consumer nations put together.
Its own reserves cannot cope with such demand. And so, while around two-thirds of domestic oil demand has to be imported, new fields within its own territory are constantly sought. Their discovery and excavation have becomes harder and more specialised. Today, rigs are drilling five miles below the sea-floor, itself 4,000ft below the surface.
The participation of global experts such as BP is vital; indeed, in the U.S. region of the Gulf of Mexico, which produces one-quarter of domestic production, BP is the largest oil and natural-gas producer. We shall come to the reasons later.
It takes us from the tiny capital of the Marshall Islands in the West Pacific through Japan and Switzerland and the patrician environs of St James's in Central London, an address which has been the focus of Obama's populist politicking.
Last night BP bowed to the intense pressure from the American government and agreed to set aside £13.5 billion ($20bn) to pay U.S. claims for the catastrophe.
Yet what is inescapable is how the accident itself was and is very much an American affair.
The United States is the world's biggest and most oil-greedy economy.
With its love of petrol-hungry cars and other energy-greedy symbols of a vibrant consumer culture, it needs the fossil fuel like a newborn infant craves milk.
Every day the U.S. gobbles up 20 million barrels; more than any other country - in fact almost as much as the rest of the top ten consumer nations put together.
Its own reserves cannot cope with such demand. And so, while around two-thirds of domestic oil demand has to be imported, new fields within its own territory are constantly sought. Their discovery and excavation have becomes harder and more specialised. Today, rigs are drilling five miles below the sea-floor, itself 4,000ft below the surface.
The participation of global experts such as BP is vital; indeed, in the U.S. region of the Gulf of Mexico, which produces one-quarter of domestic production, BP is the largest oil and natural-gas producer. We shall come to the reasons later.
No comments:
Post a Comment