The Gulf of Mexico saga which may – or may not – be now coming to an end has more compelling implications than has been realised.   It’s not just that BP has suffered a catastrophic accident, has already paid out £2.5bn in clean-up costs, is facing even bigger compensation claims for years ahead, and has experienced the biggest reputational nosedive in modern history from third largest corporation in the US to public enemy no1.   It’s the way its record in so many other respects has been crawled over and found abysmally wanting.

It’s not even just that the Gulf of Mexico disaster comes on top of the worst US industrial disaster of the last decade, also laid at the door of BP, when its Texan oil refinery blew up in 2005 killing 15 workers.   It’s the fact that these were not just one-off episodes, but rather typical of a  safety and environment-lax, no-holds-barred, gung-ho profits culture which arrogantly accepted no checks on its industrial and financial dominance.   As the evidence now coming to light reveals, the abuse of power runs right through the whole BP record.   So how should we now respond? US Congressional hearings have shown that BP committed more that 700  safety and environmental violations in the US over the last 5 years, compared with less than 10 for the other main oil companies.   Along Alaska’s North Slope BP’s  badly maintained pipeline had earlier belched out 200,000 gallons of oil, even before the Gulf of Mexico’s 60,000 gallons a day.   BP has also been accused  (it was once known as Blair Petroleum)of corruptly lobbying for the release of the (alleged) Lockerbie bomber in order to get a prime slice of the Libyan oil-fields as well as to extract juicy multi-billion contracts from the Azerbaijani dictatorship.

BP behaved like a statelet, just like the eighteenth century East India Company acted as a branch of British foreign policy, and with equal impudence.   The question then is: do we wait for the next disaster before the media/politicians train their sights on succeeding BP commercial debacles, or should UK Select Committees (like regular US Congressional hearings) now take upon themselves the duty routinely to audit and scrutinise the record of top companies in each of the main industrial sectors?

Given their power and their level of resources, well in excess of many States within the UN, shouldn’t Parliament focus on where the power really lies, not the Departments of State which they formally shadow, but rather the biggest industrial and financial players who are already implicitly (though covertly) part of the State framework and who have the power to make or break governments?   Holding the top echelons of the private sector to account is now more important than orchestrated exchanges with Ministers or their minions.   We need to start acting on that basis.

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