BP - A hatchet job

EscapeArtist

Hmmm

De Beers you say, well like BP they are supplying to a need, and like gas, the USA are the hungriest for diamonds (China looks to be catching however), if you don't want blood diamonds then stop buying them, the same logic for drugs.

I am appalled at our governments treatment of BP, silly things we do in an election year.
There are three huge companies involved here, why not point fingers at all? IMO Halliburton is the guilty party.

True and true. Americans are very shallow when it comes to thinking about what they buy, where it comes from and how it was made; but then, ad companies, businesses, and even social pressure discourages one from asking too many questions. Otherwise, you wind up being an un-American, commie, pinko, anti-business, blah blah blah... Yes, more fingers should be pointed at Halliburton, but they've got their fingers so deep into the government I think they'll walk away unscathed.

PeterCharles

@escapeartist said:

Frankly, I don't think many Americans even know that "BP" stands for British Petroleum. Anyone that makes an anti-Brit based on BP's origins statement is a short-sighted nationalistic fool, and certainly has no a selective memory of the damages done by US companies - economically and environmentally.

Your President seem's to enjoy spitting out "British" Petroleum, apparently ignorant of the fact the company has been "BP" for years.
An anti-British streak seems to run through him and on this side of the Atlantic it's starting to irritate us. If he manages to stop BP paying any dividends that's going to hurt British pensioners who rely in no small part on them for their pensions.
Then there will be the suspicion that some in the US will encourage BP to be crucified so they can make an asset stripping killing.
Is there any truth in the reports that fishermen now working for BP in the cleanup operation are making twice/three times the monthly income they ever made by fishing?

Roger

@watkins said:

Dear bytor,

Were you, or the American people, equally outraged when an American company killed tens of thousands of innocent people, and permanently injured tens of thousands more at Bhopal, India? Your concern, as a people, was completely lacking! Bhopal continues to be an absolute disgrace, and an example of corporate America (and justice) at its worst. Handing everything over to the Indian government was a perfect piece of administrative side stepping. It was a problem caused by an American company, and America should have been the one to fix it. By way of contrast, BP has publicly stated that it will meet all clean up costs, and compensate those that need compensating.

Bob

Whoa Watkins
Many Americans were totally outraged by Bhopal. The American Bill of Rights starts out "We the People". How corporations have stuck their head into the political process is great candidate for a doctoral thesis.

However the reality is that the world did not have petro power until a hundred years ago and at the current rate will not have it a hundred years from now. It seems that the timing is about right to start getting our foot off the petro accelerator as it will only hurt more if we wait until the wells run dry or we make the rest of the world rich and ourselves poor.

The only people that will be hurt are people unwilling to let go of what oil has given them. They are afraid to compete and deal with the learning curves of new technology. However, why would the rest of us care. Lets just start moving away from oil and see how well the oilmen do under a set of rules they no longer dominate.

August

Thanks Roger,

Watkins, my wife and I were part of a candlelight vigil in our town for Bhopal when it first happened, one of hundreds of protests across the U.S., because we were outraged at the lack of real response by our government and its apparent siding with Union Carbide.

For a look at the U.S. Bhopal protesters' side of the story, check out:

Protests in US over Bhopal Gas Tragedy

Bhopal Activists Arrested in Non-Violent Demonstration Against Dow

There's lots more to be found.

I'm sorry if your local media presents a biased, anti-U.S. slant, but we are not all corporate drones.

When you say

@unknownuser said:

Your concern, as a people, was completely lacking!
you insult us all. I certainly felt it. I'm glad Roger put out a more even-tempered response first. We may be more homogeneous than the EU, but not much.

bytor

Bob,

While I can’t account for the American people as a whole at the time of the Bhopal disaster - I can honestly say the answer for me is no - I was young, foolish, and not socially or environmentally conscious at that age. Being in art school in Pittsburgh at the time, I was more concerned with chasing skirts and trying to stretch my art supply budget to cover my beer expenditures. However, I seem to remember several student gatherings / demonstrations @ some of the universities there at the time. I had a friend that was a chemical engineering grad doing a 6 month externship at a Union Carbide facility in West Virginia. At the end of the 6 month period - she decided to leave and go another direction with her life, largely due to the response and the attitude about Bhopal that she encountered within the company.

The subsequent references to the politicians and their nationalistic slanted comments don’t adequately represent the opinions or positions of the American people. Of course it is turning into a political circus now, and you have every right to be concerned for your pensions if they are impacted by BP’s stock price. Paying dividends right now with still so many unanswered questions about the spill and cleanup is easy fodder for the politicians, especially considering the recent experiences the with the banking industry being bailed out and subsequent payouts of obscene bonuses to their top brass.

Washington and the politico’s aside - I don’t get the sense from anyone I have talked to that there is any of the nationalistic finger-pointing anti-British tone that you and Peter seem so miffed about. If there is by the general public - it is ill informed and misguided, which of course we americans are completely capable of. Being irritated by the administration and politicians here in the US is quickly becoming a national pastime - so you will need to take a number and get in line.

The good that may come out of this is that there will likely be more of a willingness to implement improved procedures / regulations / monitoring for deep well drilling, and hopefully a renewed focus on alternative energy development.

Dean

jeff hammond

i finally read the news today...
http://www.theonion.com/articles/massive-flow-of-bullshit-continues-to-gush-from-bp,17564/

looks pretty bad --

EscapeArtist

@petercharles said:

Your President seem's to enjoy spitting out "British" Petroleum, apparently ignorant of the fact the company has been "BP" for years.
An anti-British streak seems to run through him and on this side of the Atlantic it's starting to irritate us.

Wow. I think it's irritating you. BP is British Petroleum, put in a Google search for "British Petroleum" and what pops up? BP! Many of us grew up with the name British Petroleum and may continue to use that name despite the fact that some marketing genius has decided that "BP" is better; it isn't ignorance, it's history. Nobody here is making this a anti-British issue except for a couple of folks that want to point out every nasty thing that a US based company has done.

If it makes you feel better, I still like England.

EscapeArtist

Ah, well. Here we go again:

http://www.wimp.com/oilspills/

linea

BP is a global conglomerate. Nowadays, it is "British" by location of head offices alone, which if you look at this picture is a modestly sized building http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BPheadoffice.JPG
compared to its Texan office http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:BPAmericasHQ.JPG

BP employ around 80,000 people globally. 22,800 of them are US nationals. Only 10,000 are British (see page 26 of report, link below). The UK only have a 40% holding in the company (see page 27). The US have 39%, the rest other nations. The biggest shareholder? JP Morgan Chase with 27.74%.
source: http://www.bp.com/assets/bp_internet/globalbp/STAGING/global_assets/downloads/F/FOI_2005_2009_full_book.pdf
I would suggest that this is why people like White House Minority leader and corporate banker John Boehner said he thinks US taxpayers should help pay for the clean up. (source: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20007511-503544.html) because he knows who the shareholders are.

So let the press bring on the anti-british rhetoric. BP are at least taking responsibility - an approach that will probably lead to the company being asset stripped and bought up by Exxon, Shell etc. Transocean on the otherhand, the Swiss perpetrators, well, their website has conveniently gone offline. see link, second on list.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&rlz=1C1_____enGB374&&sa=X&ei=URwTTKPAJ4_u0wSW4KD1CQ&ved=0CDAQBSgA&q=transocean&spell=1

watkins

Dear All,

Well, I started this thread because I wanted to canvas opinion, which has been expressed thick and strong. My comments about Bhopal were, to some degree, provocative, and my heartfelt apologies go out to those American people who felt the injustice of corporate America's response to the disaster, and either protested individually or collectively. Very little of that response was reported in the media, and so I was unaware of the extent of the protests. As they say, ignorance is bliss.

The oil spill is a collective problem, involving all those that use and consume oil. Collectively, we can fix this problem (this time), and then try to prevent it from happening again, although I guess that experience shows that this is a foolish hope.

Regards,
Bob

JuanV.Soler

far apart of the topic, maybe, what we have in front of us is the poisoning of the of the Lands of the Gulf of Mexico, Missisipi

YouTube - BP Oil Spill - Important Information!!!!! Part 1 of 3
[flash=480,385:3bugppv5]http://www.youtube.com/v/5h4JAUCnKYo&hl=es_ES&fs=1[/flash:3bugppv5]

http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/06/

I cant imagine the reason why Obama does not act but only care about responsability. This is a huge disaster and everyone should be called to help. This a World subject.
I insist about the microbes solution, why is it not taken into consideration ?

PeterCharles

What I have difficulty in understanding is that

this oil leak is in Americas back yard
America is the most technically advanced country
anything America doesn't know about the oil industry probably isn't worth knowing

So why haven't the American government stepped in, used American experts to fix the problem and back charged BP?? Don't they have an underwater "Red Adair"??

Or is it as simple that the American experts haven't got a fix for the problem anyway and are just keeping a low profile.

I see our new PM has a phone discussion scheduled with Obamah tomorrow. Lets hope he doesn't grovel and kiss a**e like his predecessors. Or maybe he should suggest the UK government underwrites the clean-up operation for BP. But as we don't have much money in the bank at the moment we'll get the money by bringing all our troops back from Afghanistan and use these Defence Department savings..... (on balance probably a better use of the money anyway).

watkins

Dear PeterCharles,

Well, as Linea explained (a couple of posts back), about 1/4 of the people working for BP are US nationals. As a large percentage of those will be seasoned oil engineers, then you could say that Americans are already working on the problem. Deep water drilling is just very difficult, and what works at 500 feet, doesn't at 5000 feet. For example, this article on methane hydrates explains why the upside-down funnel didn't work. The problems are not trivial.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methane_clathrate

Regards,
Bob

EscapeArtist

Solution is at hand: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU

[flash=853,505:16h83qh1]http://www.youtube.com/v/http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpPNQoTlacU&fs=1[/flash:16h83qh1]

August

OMG! IT"S REAL! News footage from JUNE 13! (Yes, tomorrow's date) Pipeline leak in Alaska while well leak in Gulf cannot be stopped. I did a spit-take when I heard about Operation Sombrero!

Here is documentary proof that the entire industry has not learned because they don't have to.

http://www.wimp.com/oilspills/ (Sorry, can't figure out how to embed it. It really is worth your time.)

When they are the most profitable industry in all of human history, they don't want to change and they don't have to -- and they can buy anyone and anything that gets in the way of those profits. (Every crime drama on TV has a mantra: follow the money.)

And yes, how do we get decision makers to even consider microbes? I mean it: How?

Right now, the "authorities" keep deferring to the oil industry "experts". It doesn't matter whether those "experts" are BP or Exxon or WTF, they have proven that they don't learn and have no new ideas and they are going through the same sequence of half-baked ideas that have not worked before and they are only motivated to prove they are trying as hard as they can, not motivated to change their ways.

We need real experts. How do we get them listened to?

JuanV.Soler

Hi August,
here is the video,
(Jim, the SCF tube does not work for wimp ?
i located in YouTube)

YouTube - Rachel Maddow- The more spills change_ the more they stay the same
[flash=480,385:vvkqzctq]http://www.youtube.com/v/GHmhxpQEGPo&hl=es_ES&fs=1[/flash:vvkqzctq]

¨¨And yes, how do we get decision makers to even consider microbes ? ¨¨
i think we have to do it, maybe GreenPeace is getting ready.
cheers__________________________________________________________

The folk expert, (here is his contact information), is the one of the video of the microbes solution :

J.Brent Tuttle
SpillFighters.com
jbrenttuttle@gmail.com
This is what the guy ask us for :

GET THE PRESS TO KNOW
GET BP TO KNOW
GET THE FEDERAL STANDS TO KNOW

He tells in the video, he is open to anyone who asks for.
(someone will claim it is a business?)
I hope not.
thankyou
(maybe my country does not know about it, i´ll make some inquiries)
salud¡

August

Thanks Juan,

I appreciate the help.

It's about moving -- moving forward -- NOW, not blaming. The blame is obvious and cultural and endemic and entrenched and inevitably corrupt and all too american and completely international and business as usual and too long ignored. That is not the issue.

The issue is doing something that has a hope, not just a prayer, of working.

GreenPeace is a good candidate to play hero and ACT. They haven't worried about permission before, this is no time to start. Whatever the bio fallout from the microbes (and the video suggest next to none) it will be easier in the long run than crude oil and dispersants. Microbes have been tested and have had decades to identify any long term consequences. The oil industry solutions have been tested and don't work.

But the downside is that it will show the oil industry as incompetent to clean up their own mass. That is a PR disaster that will last decades and is worth billions to prevent.

You can bet that is being talked about in oil industry CEO conference calls, even if Obama and the new P.M. are not.

EscapeArtist

@august said:

OMG! IT"S REAL! News footage from JUNE 13! (Yes, tomorrow's date) Pipeline leak in Alaska while well leak in Gulf cannot be stopped. I did a spit-take when I heard about Operation Sombrero!

Here is documentary proof that the entire industry has not learned because they don't have to. ...

Beatcha to it, look up about 8 posts!

JuanV.Soler

there is something you American People can do about it, NOW ¡

That folk does not count on us (non American People), yet .
cheers._)

http://spillfighters.com/petition/

something to do about it.JPG

Khai

@unknownuser said:

I insist about the microbes solution, why is it not taken into consideration ?

it is being taken into consideration.

a little research shows the problem. it's not ready yet. should be another six months or so until it is.