Big Oil can say we’re all to blame for its disaster

WHILE the BP Gulf of Mexico disaster continues to dominate world media attention, the response of the offshore oil exploration companies appears to be self-preservation, dodging responsibility and denial.

This disaster, however, has to be seen in the overall context of the new US administration pandering to Republicans and the oil industry in order to get the Kerry/Lieberman Climate Bill enacted. On March 31 last, President Obama announced plans to allow oil and gas exploration and drilling over a vast expanse of US coastal waters that have been protected for decades.

Conservationists said Obama’s plan would expose the waters off southern Atlantic states and the eastern Gulf of Mexico to oil spills and other dangers, threatening many tourism and fishing-dependent communities.

The same caution was expressed for Alaska’s Beaufort and Chukchi seas, which are especially sensitive to oil drilling.

The people, politicians and environmental organisations who opposed this drilling concession are now vindicated, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Since the Deepwater Horizon disaster, California has placed a permanent ban on offshore oil drilling.

Meanwhile, in the midst of this oily confusion and denial, engineers are trying to put “steel diapers” on the life-destroying crude that is gushing into one of the world’s most environmentally sensitive ocean ecosystems, the Gulf Coast of the US.

Amid all these frantic half-measures being brainstormed in the offices of BP, Big Oil will be telling us unequivocally that “the more oil you people use, the more wells we need to drill for you. The more wells we drill, the greater the chance of a catastrophic spill like the one in the Gulf of Mexico. Oil is a finite resource, yet you expect an infinite supply at a cheap price. What can we the oil industry do only try to meet that insatiable demand?”

John Fitzgerald

Fahee

Kilmacow

Co Kilkenny