If a nation or group of terrorists had perpetrated a similar crime, the full weight of the US government would justifiably be focused on revenge.The spill in the Gulf may be the worst of all time before it's over. The public relations spin machines are in over-drive. BP Chairman Tony Hayward has lurched from minimizing the spill, to making it all about him ('I want my life back') to coming up with cute headlines to describe BPs succession of failed attempts to cap the gaping hole gushing oil.
Now there are ads in which Hayward looks soulfully into a camera to express his sorrow about the spill. All that's missing is a voiceover with Tiger Woods' father. It would all be semi-comical except it's not. It's absolutely real, with real consequences.
Eleven people are already dead. Tens of thousands will have their lives altered permanently. Untold numbers of people will get sick. An ecological dead zone expanding in the Gulf. And no real end is in sight.
This should be the end for British Petroleum and for the bureacrats who were supposed to oversee them. The measured response of President Obama is in stark contrast to the consequences that millions of innocent Americans are feeling. It's way too nuanced and rational. It's time to tell BP to close up shop in the US, never to return. It's time to clean house at MMS. Tony Hayward and his senior team should be facing criminal charges for their depraved indifference to safety.
If this doesn't reinforce the idea that government oversight has to be at arm's length from the industry it's supposed to be monitoring, nothing will.
3 comments:
This is one time where the President of the United States is getting way too much heat. You know he's not my favorite.There are risks in the world and for a world that has an unquenchable thirst for oil,we now see our risks. But then again how do you explain over 35,000 successful drillings? It's not the technology. This was an avoidable disaster.As usual, it was driven by the human error
No more thought. If you would close down BP like you said, where do we get the compensation to clean up the mess they created. I say, let's let them pay with their capital
It goes without saying that BP should pay for everything - and then at the very least barred from any future US contract. The fact that there have been 35,000 wells drilled with relatively few spills underscores the mis-management at BP. A spill of this magnitude should never have happened.
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