Tag Archives: usa

Tax breaks ‘crucial’ for Arctic oil

Posted on by
1

On Friday 14th October, Texas governor and US presidential candidate Rick Perry unveiled his ‘jobs and energy’ policy which “resembles a wish list for the oil and gas industry” according to the New York Times. The plan, available online, involves scaling down the “job-killing” Environmental Protection Agency and opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling. It also involves “leveling the playing field for all energy industries by eliminating subsidies” – hang on, double check – yes, Perry means eliminating “subsidies and loan guarantees for inefficient and uncompetitive green energy programs”.

The argument that cleaner energy would be economically uncompetitive without subsidies  is not new – what’s less commonly discussed is the level of subsidies needed for new oil extraction. Continue reading →

The world’s biggest data leak

Posted on by
Reply

On Friday 2 September, Wikileaks finally published the full batch of over 250,000 US diplomatic cables. The unredacted cables are now available online. The decision to dump the data in the open has landed Wikileaks in further controversy and drawn condemnation from its former media partners around the world, due to the possible risk of harm or danger to individuals named in the cables.

Perhaps it was only a matter of time. As interest in the story waned at The Guardian and other media outlets, Wikileaks engaged a wider range of partners, including 234NEXT.com in Nigeria, to leak country specific material. But the sheer number and size of documents would put any media organisation under strain, and within a few weeks 234NEXT had moved on like its predecessors. The task of editing and redacting the material presented a substantial burden which nobody seemed able to bear for too long.

Over the year, PLATFORM was able to provide timely analysis of cables that exposed Shell’s infiltration of the government of Nigeria, BP’s cover up of a major offshore gas leak in Azerbaijan, ENI’s corruption in Uganda and UK firm Heritage offers to bribe officials in Congo. Now, 9 months after the first cables were released, we will be able to look deeper into the cables and expose the oil industry’s hidden channels of power, influence and abuse and the role of our governments have played.

Shell sponsors oil clean up competition

Posted on by
Reply

I challenge anyone to find a more cynical example of corporate sponsorship than this one.

(Thanks to @Adammaanit in Brighton and @MsVanessaMurray in Australia for bringing it to our attention).

In the same week that Shell was condemned by the UN for its devastating oil spills in Ogoni, and admitted liability for 2 massive spills in Bodo village in the Niger Delta, the company announced that its sponsorship of an oil spill clean up competition in the US:

Shell has announced that it is a supporting partner of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X Challenge, a global competition to develop the most effective oil spill cleanup equipment.

10 teams from Northern Europe and the United States will compete for prize money, with Shell’s Peter Velez, global emergency response manager, judging the scores.

The team with the highest oil recovery rate and highest oil recovery efficiency will get $1m first prize; second place will get $300k and third place $100k.

 

So while the Ogoni people continue drink water contaminated with hydrocarbons 1,000 times higher than the legal limit, and have their land and fisheries turned into toxic dump, they can at least rest in the knowledge that Shell cares far more about its image than it does about their suffering.

If you feel it, tweet it:

“Shame on @Shell for decades of doing nothing to clean Ogoni oil spills.”

 

Donors warn US university over artist’s climate change work

Posted on by
Reply

It’s 22nd July 2011, and another arts, fossil fuel sponsorship, censorship story breaks. There’s a furore over a newly commissioned public sculpture at the University of Wyoming. Wyoming is a US state which mines more coal than any other in the union. The piece, called Carbon Sink, What Goes Around Comes Around by British artist Chris Drury draws the link between coal, climate change, and the pine beetle infestation that is devastating the Rocky Mountains because the climate no longer gets cold enough in winter to control their numbers. The trouble is, the University is heavily backed by the fossil fuel industry, and Carbon Sink has provoked a wounded wail: “They get millions of dollars in royalties from oil, gas and coal to run the university, and then they put up a monument attacking me, demonising the industry,” said Marion Loomis, the director of the Wyoming Mining Association… “I understand academic freedom, and we’re very supportive of it, but it’s still disappointing.” Drury was surprised. “I thought it was a fairly innocuous thing to do. But it’s kind of upset a lot of people here. Perhaps it was slightly more obvious because it is slightly more crucial in this state. But this is a university so I expected to start a debate, not a row.” Tom Lubnau, a Wyoming state legislator commented “While I would never tinker with the University of Wyoming budget… every now and then, you have to use some of these opportunities to educate some of the folks at the University about where their paychecks come from.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/22/wyoming-university-coa…

In 2003, PLATFORM collaborated with new economics foundation and Corporate Watch on a report “Degrees of Capture: Universities, the Oil Industry and Climate Change” which examined the relationship between Britain’s universities and oil industry sponsorship of research and facilities, and how that relationship has a bearing on climate change. Amongst many other significant findings, the report found that the then balance of university-based energy research and development (R&D) significantly increased our dependence on fossil fuels, and undermined the development of renewable energies, thus going directly against other government directives such as the 2003 Energy White Paper which set a target for the UK to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 60% by 2050. The detailed report caused a lot of useful outraged responses, especially from universities in Scotland, and the Scottish Executive, many of former being heavily backed by the North Sea oil industry.
http://www.platformlondon.org/carbonweb/showitem.asp?article=99&parent=9

In 2004, at the invitation of the Institute for Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts at the University of Bath, we created a exhibition and conversation from Degrees of Capture which addressed the following questions:
What constitutes an ethical relationship between academic research and a business sponsor or partner?
To what extent are these relationships between academia and business part of a public relations function, in the same way as companies sponsor cultural and arts events?
To ensure academic freedom, shouldn’t academic institutions or individuals develop an ethical policy for engaging with business?
http://www.bath.ac.uk/icia/archive-old/exhibitions04.shtml

In these days post Browne Review of Higher Education where the free market is being given a massive thumbs up and even arts courses are being driven to position themselves as good for business, it’s time to regroup. Browne is Lord John Browne, ex-Chief Executive of BP, Chair of Tate’s Board of Trustees, and lover of opera, owner of a palazzo on the Grand Canal. The recent reinstatement of the arts, culture and higher education areas of public life that should be governed by market forces, and not as a civil society “good” (however problematic) has been given a huge boost under Browne’s recommendations, which must be resisted.
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/corporate/docs/s/10-1208-securing-s…

Wikileaks cables reveal BP cover-up in Azerbaijan

Posted on by
Reply

New Wikileaks cables about another major offshore gas leak in the Caspian give a rare insight into how BP attempts to control the public narratives when it hits crisis and failure. Writing a book about the company’s Caucasus pipelines, we’ve been all over the region, digging for the truth behind these events. Now the sudden release of documents allows a glimpse into the company’s preferred world of secrecy and back-room meetings.

On 17th September 2008 BP scrambled helicopters and rescue vessels to reach the Central Azeri oil rig far out in the Caspian Sea. Lying 130 kilometers offshore from Azerbaijan’s capital city Baku, the country’s largest platform was threatening to explode, with gas leaked rapidly from the seabed,. All 212 staff were rapidly evacuated and the platform was shut down, as were its sister platform, West Azeri. Oil production from the company’s Azeri-Chirag-Gunashli oil field (ACG) plummeted by 500,000 barrels per day.

As the Guardian’s publication of cables relating to the gas leak have revealed, BP was eager to prevent even its commercial partners knowing the full extent of the near disaster. The oil field is run by a consortium of ten companies, including ExxonMobil and the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR). With oil prices high, the shut-down meant a daily loss of $50 million. The gas leak was slashing BP’s partners’ revenue streams, so unsurprisingly Exxon et al were uneasy being kept out of the loop.

Given the importance of oil revenues to Azerbaijan’s budget, state pressure for disclosure might be expected, as Capitol Hill forced BP to provide live streamed video of the Macondo leak in May 2010. However the Wikileaks cables make clear that BP came under no such pressure in Azerbaijan, illustrating the close collusion between company and the Azeri autocracy. President Ilham Aliyev’s government recognises BP’s operations as crucial to propping up his regime, and extremely tight control of the Azeri media ensured that there was next to no coverage of BP’s crisis. The company’s position in the country is so dominant that the head of BP Azerbaijan is widely seen as the second most powerful man in the country .

When the gas leak struck threatening disaster for the Caspian Sea, both BP and the Azeri government were already uptight and nervous over their export pipelines, recently shut down by a combination of Kurdish rebel attack and the Russia-Georgia war.

Barely one month earlier in August, a vast explosion had ripped through the wooded valley near Refahiye in Turkey. Sheets of fire 80 meters high shot into the sky followed by an immense column of smoke as 30,000 barrels of oil from the Azeri fields went up in flames. The fire raged for 6 days, troops were deployed and government ministers arrived by helicopter. The ccompany’s pipeline was shut down and BP declared force majeure claiming ‘an act of terrorism’. Visiting the place of the explosion nine months later, farmers nearby were extremely reluctant to describe how their fields were covered in ash and the temporary evacuation of a village. In large part their silence came from the perception of this foreign-owned pipeline as a Turkish ‘state project’ and thus should not be criticised.

With their primary pipeline shut-down, BP routed Azeri oil through a back-up route. But on the night of 7th August 2008 a Russian fighter flew low near the village of Alkahi- Samgori in eastern Georgia, dropping bombs across a wide valley of grazing land. The Georgian government announced an attempted bombing of the pipeline, whilst BP strenuously denied this was the case. With repeated Russian bombing runs, Georgian Ministers kept making public statements to the West, hoping the US and NATO would be alarmed by the gravity of such an attack on one of Europe’s oil supply lines. But BP had no interest in a news story about the threats to its oil infrastructure; a company executive in Tbilisi told us they chose to ‘close down’ the story. Only five days after this first aerial attack, BP quietly shut down the pipeline. Eight months later, we stood in one of those craters peering out at the pipeline marker posts just yards away.

Within the month, disaster struck again, although this time it was a technical failure and BP’s own fault. But with all the turbulence over the previous months, the company wanted to keep the dampers on media coverage and avoid another story about its failures to run safe and secure operations in the Caucasus and Caspian. The Wikileaks material illustrates how one of the UK’s largest corporations chose not to share crucial information with even its closest partners, actively engaging and disengaging the media in constructing the public narrative of events.

James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello of PLATFORM are co-authors of the forthcoming book The Oil Road – to be published by Verso in June 2011.

Cables released by the Guardian on BP in Azerbaijan include:
Aliyev changes tune after Georgia invasion, says BP
BP says ‘rush job’ by Turks on gas pipeline is ‘not inconceivable’
BP under fire over handling of gas leak incident
BP blames gas leak on ‘bad cement job’
BP may never know cause of gas leak, US told

Wikileaks cable shines light on ENI corruption in Uganda; Heritage offered to pay bribes in Congo

Posted on by
3

• SECRET US CABLE SHINES LIGHT ON ENI CORRUPTION IN UGANDA
• HERITAGE OFFERED TO PAY BRIBES IN CONGO

‘’If Tullow’s allegations are true – and we believe they are …”
US Embassy, Kampala, 17 December 2009

A secret United States diplomatic cable (below and here) published by Wikileaks last week has exposed the real politics of oil in Uganda, confirming that the Americans believed that corruption was endemic at the highest level of decision-making. The December 2009 report sent by the US embassy in Kampala confirms that:

- The Americans believed the allegations that Italian oil major Eni was trying to bribe its way into Uganda’s oil fields in late 2009 by making payments through the security minister (and ruling party secretary-general) Amama Mbabazi , using a holding company, TKL Holdings
- Tullow believe Tony Buckingham’s Heritage Oil – the very company it was partnered with -had also ‘compensated’ Ugandan politicians in order to facilitate a deal with Eni and assist Heritage’s exit from the country
- Heritage also offered to ‘take care’ of Congolese officials on behalf of its partner Tullow to get exploration moving on the other side of the lake

The cable, which largely reports a conversation between Tullow Vice President Tim O’Hanlon and the US Ambassador Jerry Lanier, was written at a crucial time: Heritage was seeking to sell its Lake Albert oil licenses to Eni; its then partner Tullow wanted them too. The three-way tussle resulted in weeks of secret negotiations in Kampala in which senior politicians lobbied on behalf of different corporate interests and money was widely rumoured to be changing hands.

Platform was handed a Ugandan intelligence document in January 2010, two months after the US cable was sent, outlining the ENI bribes – naming Mbabazi, the use of TKL Holdings, the role of frontmen Mark Christian and Moses Seruje, and the presence of Eni ‘broker’ Oded Mayer in Kampala.

No concrete evidence ever emerged. Heritage ultimately sold to Tullow, not Eni, and skipped the country without paying $400m in capital gains tax on the $1.3bn it received in the deal. Mbabazi remains one of the most influential of the National Resistance Movement old guard, close enough to President Museveni that few think he would have coordinated bribes without his boss’ sanctioning. It was reported at the time that Eni were furious that their payments had yielded no result.

Key questions remain:
- On what basis did the US embassy believe the allegations to be true? Had they conducted their own investigation and why were their concerns not shared?
- Why was evidence not shared with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which was then investigating ENI for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for bribery in Nigeria?
- Do the United States or other embassies have evidence of other payments made by oil companies in Uganda? Has Tullow sanctioned bribes or has it turned a blind eye to payments facilitated by its new partners, Total and CNOOC?
- Why have repeated Freedom of Information requests made by PLATFORM to the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office produced no answers when these matters are almost certain to have been under discussion? Especially given that the US cable documents O’Hanlon specifically asking the US Ambassador to work “in concert with the British High Commissioner” to raise concerns over the Heritage-ENI sale.

The leaking of the cable has caused a storm in Uganda, with just weeks to go before the Presidential election and with Tullow still fighting for government approval for production to start alongside Total and the China National Offshore Oil Company. The decisions taken in 2009/2010 – and the process by which Tullow ultimately won the battle of the companies – are still cloaked in secrecy.

ENI have issued a spluttering denial. ”ENI denies the serious allegations which are completely without foundation and has instructed its lawyers to initiate legal proceedings to compensate for any damage caused to the company’s reputation,” a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, Tullow’s O’Hanlon wrote to President Museveni two days ago, denying the conversation with the American Ambassador and desperately trying to smooth out the situation. Tullow are already unpopular with Ugandan politicians – these revelations so close to the election will sour relations further.

He wrote: “No doubt you have been made aware of the illegal theft of confidential communications from various US Embassies around the world including that in Kampala and the publication of selected and often doctored elements of these on the internet.

In one such release, I have been mentioned as accusing your Honourable Ministers ONEK and MBABAZI of involvement in corruption during a meeting I had with the US ambassador last year. This is absolutely false.

Of course, I never made such a claim to the US ambassador but merely discussed with him at our meeting in December 2009 the detailed stories published in the previous week’s local press and the associated rumors circulating in Kampala at that time. I have no evidence to present implicating the Honourable Ministers in corruption and have no reason to believe that the rumors sweeping Kampala at the time were actually true.

I can assure Your Excellency that we will continue to monitor these matters closely and will work in any way we can with the two Ministers involved to help clear their names. I remain available in Kampala and welcome any advice you may have to offer in this regard and sincerely regret this entire unhappy episode.

Respectfully Yours

Tim O’HANLON 
Vice-President, African Business

HERITAGE OFFER TO PAY BRIBES IN DRC

The cable also quotes O’Hanlon bemoaning the company’s lack of progress with its license on the other side of Lake Albert, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

‘O’Hanlon said TULLOW’s exploration efforts on the DRC side of Lake Albert are hampered by TULLOW’s refusal to pay off key Congolese officials, including President Laurent Kabila. O’Hanlon added that Heritage recently offered to help TULLOW “take care” of problems on the Congolese side in order to begin exploration. TULLOW refused, according to O’Hanlon.’

Platform was handed a letter in Kinshasa in May 2010 confirming that Heritage had handed over legal “rights of negotiation” to its partner Tullow two years before. The two companies had signed a disputed Production Sharing Agreement in 2006 (leaked to PLATFORM and available here) and had been lobbying for exploration to start since then. The cable now reveals that Heritage did in fact still have a presence in Kinshasa which it was willing to exert on behalf of its partner – but behind the scenes. In the cable, O’Hanlon says Tullow refused this help. But Congolese are still asking:

- Why were Heritage and Tullow granted their original PSA in 2006? What payments were made then?
- If Tullow was officially handling negotiations with Kinshasa in 2009, why were Heritage still in a position to ‘take care’ of problems?
- Does Tullow now admit that it believed its DRC partner was prepared to offer bribes?
- Did the British Embassy in Kinshasa know about Heritage’s proposal to pay bribes? If so, why have the FCO, UK Trade & Industry and BIS not restricted their diplomatic support for the company, including its operations in Iraq?
- If the British Embassy was not informed by Tullow about Heritage’s offer, will it now – in light of these revelations – re-evaluate its close relationship with Tullow?
- Given the allegations about Heritage’s willingness to pay bribes, has the British Embassy in Kinshasa now passed all relevant information to the Serious Fraud Office in London?

The leaked cable only provides a first, partial picture of how companies and governments are colluding at Lake Albert to enrich themselves and the lengths oil executives will go to in order to secure contracts. Many other examples of corruption are well known to local journalists and communities at Lake Albert but cannot be proved without tracing the money or catching intermediaries red-handed. In many cases, evidence will only emerge much later, or when particular politicians and companies fall out of favour. But we are already getting glimpses of the dirty deals and dishonest politics that lie behind the promises and public relations. Heritage have left Uganda and DRC with $1bn in their pocket. But the nature of their relationships in both countries must still be the subject of urgent investigation.

This blog piece was written by Taimour Lay, Former PLATFORM researcher, Uganda and DRC

For more information on the history of Tullow and Heritage in Uganda and DRC, see PLATFORM’s reports athttp://www.carbonweb.org/uganda and http://www.carbonweb.org/drc



Ballad of the Black Gold

Posted on by
Reply

From the RSW blog: “New from Talib Kweli, this hard-hitting music video unpacks the story of of Nigeria’s oil curse, the Ogoni struggle and the complicit role of Western governments and companies. Warning: this video contains strong political lyrics.”

 

“Summer of Tears” in Louisiana’s Bayous

Posted on by
Reply

Frontline waterkeepers from Louisiana’s bayous have begun to tell of the devastation caused by the Macondo rupture in the sea floor. Tracy Kuhns, is the Louisiana Bayoukeeper as well as running the Fishing Community Family Support Center. Her husband, Michael Roberts, is a fisherman and they live on Bayou Barataria where fishing is down for multiple reasons, one being the waste left behind by oil and gas explorations and takings going back many decades.

SUMMER OF TEARS

The boat ride, out, from Lafitte, Louisiana, Sunday, May 23, 2010, to our fishing grounds was not unlike any other I have taken in my life, as a commercial fisherman from this area. I have made the trip thousands of times in my 35 plus years shrimping and crabbing. A warm breeze in my face, it is a typical Louisiana summer day. 3 people were with me, my wife Tracy, Ian Wren, and our grandson, Scottie. I was soon to find out, how untypical this day would become for me, not unlike a death in the family. This was going to be a very bad day for me.

Photo by Jeffrey Dubinsky, Grand Isle, LA

As we neared Barataria Bay, the smell of crude oil in the air was getting thicker and thicker. An event that always brought joy to me all of my life, the approach of the fishing grounds, was slowly turning into a nightmare. As we entered Grand Lake, the name we fishermen call Barataria Bay, I started to see a weird, glassy look to the water and soon it became evident to me, there was oil sheen as far as I could see. Soon, we were running past patches of red oil floating on top of the water. As we headed farther south, we saw at least a dozen boats, in the distance, which appeared to be shrimping. We soon realized that shrimping was not what they were doing at all, but instead they were towing oil booms in a desperate attempt to corral oil that was pouring into our fishing grounds. We stopped to talk to one of the fishermen, towing a boom, a young fisherman from Lafitte. What he told me floored me. He said, “What we are seeing in the lake, the oil, was but a drop in the bucket of what was to come.” He had just come out of the Gulf of Mexico and he said, “It was unbelievable, the oil runs for miles and miles and was headed for shore and into our fishing grounds”. I thought, what I had already seen in the lake was enough for a lifetime. We talked a little while longer, gave the fisherman some protective respirators and were soon on our way. As we left the small fleet of boats, working feverishly, trying to corral the oil, I became overwhelmed with what I just saw.

I am not real emotional and consider myself a pretty tough guy. You have to be to survive as a fisherman. As I left that scene, tears flowed down my face and I cried. Something I have not done in a long time, but would do several more times that day. I tried not to let my grandson, Scottie, see me crying. I didn’t think he would understand, I was crying for his stolen future. None of this will be the same, for decades to come. The damage is going to be immense and I do not think our lives here in South Louisiana will ever be the same. He is too young to understand. He has an intense love for our way of life here. He wants to be a fisherman and a fishing guide when he gets older. It is what he is, it is in his soul, and it is his culture. How can I tell him that this may never come to pass now, now that everything he loves in the outdoors may soon be destroyed by this massive oil spill? How do we tell this to a generation of young people, in south Louisiana who live and breathe this bayou life that they love so much, could soon be gone? How do we tell them? All this raced through my mind and I wept.

We continued farther south towards Grand Terre Island. We approached Bird Island. The real name is Queen Bess Island, but we call it Bird Island, because it is always full of birds. It is a rookery, a nesting island for thousands of birds, pelicans, terns, gulls etc. As we got closer, we saw that protective boom had been placed around about two thirds of the island. It was obvious to me, that oil had gone under the boom and was fouling the shore and had undoubtedly oil some birds. My God. We would see this scene again at Cat Island and other unnamed islands that day. We continued on to the east past Coup Abel Pass and more shrimp boats trying to contain some of the oil on the surface. We arrived at 4 Bayou Pass to see more boats working on the same thing. We beached the boat and decided to look at the beach between the passes.

The scene was one of horror to me. There was thick red oil on the entire stretch of beach, with oil continuing to wash ashore. The water looked to be infused with red oil, with billions of, what appeared to be, red pebbles of oil washing up on the beach with every wave. The red oil pebbles, at the high tide mark on the beach were melting into pools of red goo in the hot Louisiana sun. The damage was overwhelming. There was nobody there to clean it up. It would take an army to do it. Like so much of coastal Louisiana, it was accessible only by boat. Will it ever be cleaned up? I don’t know. Tears again. We soon left that beach and started to head home.

We took a little different route home, staying a little farther to the east side of Barataria Bay. As we approached the northern end of the bay, we ran into another raft of oil that appeared to be covering many square miles. It was only a mile from the interior bayous on the north side of Barataria Bay. My God. No boats were towing boom in this area. I do not think anyone even knew it was there. A little bit farther north, we saw some shrimp boats with boom, on anchor, waiting to try and protect Bayou St. Dennis from the oil. I alerted them of the approaching oil. I hope they were able to control it before it reached the bayou. We left them and started to head in.

My heart never felt so heavy, as on that ride in. I thought to myself, this is the most I’ve cried since I was a baby. In fact I am sure it was. This will be a summer of tears for a lot of us in south Louisiana.

Michael Roberts
Louisiana Bayoukeeper, Inc

Skytruth challenges BP attempts to downplay spill

Posted on by
Reply

Tiny Skytruth have been challenging BP’s estimates on how much crude is spilling out of the Macondo well into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The organisation began analysing satellite & radar data soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig sank on April 22nd. BP initially claimed 1,000 barrels were spilling daily – after Skytruth pointed out that this was a ridiculous underestimate, the company revised the daily rate to 5,000 barrels. Since then, Skytruth have made clear that this is still far lower than the reality, with even 25,000 barrels a day a “rock bottom” figure.

SkyTruth first analyzed satellite and radar data on the spill shortly after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank after a fire April 22. It challenged initial estimates that 1,000 barrels of oil were gushing daily from the wellhead nearly a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, about 130 miles southeast of New Orleans. Federal officials and BP quickly revised the estimated daily rate to 5,000 barrels.

Working out of a West Virginia office, the organisation’s one paid employee and number of volunteers use downloaded satellite imagery from NASA to calcultate the depth of oil & its spread. They then apply standard extrapolation methods from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to calculate the total oil volume.

Who to blame for the Gulf of Mexico spill?

Posted on by
Reply

As the leaking crude in the Gulf of Mexico chokes sperm whales, wipes out local fishing incomes and ruins tourist destinations, we’ll see continued debates over who is to blame. Obama is pointing at BP, insisting the company won’t be let off the hook. BP’s claiming that they weren’t really on the scene – Transocean were after all the drilling contractor. Transocean are saying they followed BP’s brief, but that Halliburton must have failed to set the correct cement plug – and Halliburton were after all also involved in the disastrous Timor Sea spill last August.

Greg Palast has a great piece on truthout making clear that BP bears central responsibility – as it did with Exxon Valdez back in 89. The company was the operator, prepared the spec, directed Transocean where & how to drill. This in a context where BP was cutting corners, drilling deeper than they were allowed, making cost-savings by not installing an acoustic trigger and was evidently not prepared to deal with a major oil spill. BP clearly isn’t a responsible operator – reaping mega-profits when all is easy before complaining that life is tough when something goes wrong.

But imagine if BP were “better”: if it had more staff on board, was more careful in observing correct drilling depths and didn’t push Transocean to make cutbacks. Either way, offshore drilling, especially deepwater offshore, is inherently risky. The oil companies are developing the technology to break through this frontier, reaching ever greater depths – BP’s Tiber find in August 2009 was 35,000 feet down, deeper than Mount Everest is tall, deeper than the previous record Tupi well off Brazil and several times as deep as the current Macondo failure. But as the operations become more complicated, the risks of failure increase. And when that disaster happens as it did in late April, dealing with it is wholly outside the oil companies’ expertise. The company described its mega-Thunder Horse project as “at or beyond the limits of the offshore industry’s experience”. BP has wells planned in the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and Angola that are deeper and more complicated than what Deepwater Horizon was attempting.

John Gapper in the FT recognises this, and points out that the current blow-up is “less a reminder of BP’s legacy” of failures than an indicator of the future “oil supermajors face by drilling in such difficult spots.” He does not blame BP for being careless, recognising that the disaster is a result “of the inherent nature of the task. It may want to blame the past but the Deepwater fiasco looks ominously like the future.”

Clearly, BP needs to pay up for the losses & destruction caused by the current leak. And then we need to stop state & corporate efforts to open up more of the oceans to offshore drilling.