The real meaning of BP’s Gulf of Mexico debacle
May 29th, 2010Why such fuss about the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico? True, the leakage is large, but still nowhere near the size of previous oil spills. So far at least 60,000 tons have leaked from the Deepwater Horizon explosion, but the Gulf War oil spill (1991) involved 1.4 m tons, the Atlantic Empress tanker (Trinidad & Tobago, 1979) 287,000 tons, Fergana Valley (Uzbekistan, 1992) 285,000 tons, the nowruz oil field (Persian Gulf, 1983) 260,000 tons, and Amoco Cadiz (Brittany, France, 1978) 223,000 tons. The Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska with which the current Gulf of Mexico is being compared amounted to some 34,000 tons. So what’s so special this time? Answer: because it directly impacts on the US.
No matter that 2,000 major spillages in the Niger Delta has never been cleaned up by Shell, or that rivers and wellls in at least 7 African countries have been badly polluted, or that huge stretches of 3 Latin American countries have been ruined by spillages, blowouts and toxic dumping, or that at least 4 of the 7 ugly Oil Sisters currently confront dozens, even hundreds, of lawsuits even up to $30bn a time (Ecuador). All this can be spun out, got rid of modestly out of court, or brazenly faced down. But not when America is involved and the US President himself takes up the issue. That cannot be right. (more…)
