How The BP Disaster Was A Conservative Model of Deregulation
Executive Summary
- Why Deregulation is Grand
- Who Me?
- How Deep Was BP Drilling?
- Why Was the “Top Kill” Procedure Delayed
- Lying BP CEO
- United Against Safety Standards
- State of US Energy
- BP Substituting PR for Action
- Lying and Cheating
- Up To This Point?
- The Myth of Obama as a Populist
Another fine example of deregulation. I am sure Reagan and Friedman are very proud right now.
Why Deregulation is Grand
Conservatives think deregulation is a great idea. In fact, I cannot remember a single conservative supporting regulation. After all, the government needs to get off of people’s backs, especially the backs of wealthy political donors like BP. In fact, there has been next to no off-shore regulation since the Bush Administration’s oil buddies took over the white house and the oil regulatory apparatus. The video below lays it out pretty well.
Who Me?
In typical fashion, the CEO does not think that BP is responsible for the spill, however. Of course, not. BP only has rights, not responsibilities. As subjects of corporations, it is important that all of us recognize it. When BP pulls oil out of the gulf its “private property,” when they spill it all over the gulf, it is now a socialized responsibility.
After the rupture, BP placed 100% of the blame on TransOceanic, the company that operated the rig. (what BP failed to mention is that BP has several of its people on the rig to ensure quality). However, TransOceanic could make the case that they are not responsible either because it is Haliburton that capped the well improperly. Haliburton certainly has someone else they could blame, possibly Cameron International, that supplied the failed blow out preventer. However, who is to blame also circles back to BP, not only because they are the ones paying for the drilling to be done, but also because they mislead their subcontractors as to the depth of the drilling taking place on the Deepwater Horizon.
How Deep Was BP Drilling?
Interesting comments from different articles on the disaster.
- BP was drilling deeper than the 18,000-foot limit they were supposed to operate within.
- BP failed to inform their subcontractor, Haliburton, of the true depth of the well. Haliburton poured enough concrete to cap an 18,000 foot well, but the increased pressure blew the cap.
- BP initially claimed that the well was capped and there was no leakage. While they were lying, it is estimated that 2.5 million gallons a day was and is continuing to shoot from the ocean floor.
- The US Coast Guard repeated BP’s claim. Therefore, the government response was delayed until the truth “leaked” out.
- BP was also responsible for spill containment for Prince William Sound, where the Exxon Valdez disaster occurred. BP was found to be negligent, having lied to the US government about the number of booms, cleanup vessels, and trained crews that it had on call in the area. In fact, to cut costs, BP had no booms and had fired all the trained crews and replaced them with untrained workers.
- It is suspected that BP has done similar cost cutting in the Gulf. They did not have the necessary personnel on hand and stonewalled with claims of no leakage while they readied a token show of preparedness.
According to Robert Kennedy Jr., there is now conclusive evidence that BP was drilling to 25,000 feet, even though they only had a permit to drill to 18,000 feet. Of course, the question should be “why?” the platform was not periodically reviewed and its records checked. Another question which should be raised is if no well has ever been capped at 5000 feet (the sea floor depth of the well, not the overall well depth), how did BP get a permit to drill there in the first place? Do we make a habit of providing permits for activities that if there is an accident, there is no proven method of stopping the damage? If so, why?
Why Was the “Top Kill” Procedure Delayed
Global Research had pointed out that BP continued to control the disaster recovery when they had serious conflicts of interests in how to approach stopping the leak. Continually Obama has pointed out that the government can’t do much, and that BP has the “expertise,” and the government doesn’t. However, did they have the motivation to stop the leak as soon as possible?
BP appears to have focused on protecting its investment over plugging the leak as soon as possible. This was why the top kill procedure was postponed. Even in disaster, the government follows a deregulated model, with private industry making cost-benefit decisions trading off their profits vs. environmental destruction.
It brings up the interesting question of whether a private company should be allowed to have tactical command over a disaster that they caused.
Lying BP CEO
Strangely, the BP CEO stated that BP was responsible for cleaning up the spill. That is inconsistent, how can they be responsible for cleaning up the spill if they were not responsible for the spill? However, what the CEO failed to mention is that due to legislation passed during the Bush Administration, their liability is capped at $75 million. (although BP also says it will pay all legitimate costs, if true it brings up the question of why they lobbied so aggressively to cap their liabilities at $75 million). The CEO of BP, like any other CEO, lies a lot. His role is to maximize shareholder value, and thus telling the truth if it reduced the stock price, would in effect subject him to damages by a shareholder lawsuit. That fact appears to go unreported. The fact that a CEO has a “fiduciary duty” to lie and mislead is barely worth commenting on. So the CEO of BP lies to the public and lies to the government about the severity of the spill. The lies are so extensive that I have created a separate blog posting just to keep track of BP’s lies.
The CEO lied when he was confronted by the fact the BP was making fishermen sign liability waivers and said that “he had just been alerted to it.” At the same time, BP is offering liability waivers for $5000 to Alabamans.
The CEO went as far as to say that BP was making great strides in safety. That is also inconsistent since they have one of the worst safety records in the industry, and now have an enormous disaster on their hands. It brings up the question, if this is enormous strides, what would not be making the grade?
In short, BP does not have much credibility. That is what getting caught repeatedly lying does to one’s reputation. Before mainstream media outlets waste time interviewing executives from BP, it would be good to check their history of lying.
BP CEO Tony Hayward is a lie machine.
United Against Safety Standards
BP, Transocean, and Haliburton are all responsible, because of they all lobby against the environmental safeguards that lead to the disaster. The oil industry lobbied against acoustic valve which are required by Norway and Brazil, but which American oil lobbyists consider ineffective. In fact just last month BP lobbied against additional equipment and inspection was not needed.
State of US Energy
Under the Bush Administration, big energy got anything it wanted, including great reductions in environmental regulations. As such, we now have the most dangerous energy infrastructure ever in the modern era. Deepwater Horizon is only 0ne of many at risk rigs that are unregulated. What happens when other ones crack, and we are faced with another disaster? How quickly can the Obama Administration move to rebuild the offshore oil regulation apparatus that Bush disintegrated?
In truth, culpability for the disaster can more accurately be laid at the Bush Administration’s doorstep. For eight years, George Bush’s presidency infected the oil industry’s oversight agency, the Minerals Management Service, with a septic culture of corruption from which it has yet to recover. Oil patch alumnae in the White House encouraged agency personnel to engineer weakened safeguards that directly contributed to the gulf catastrophe. – Huffington Post
This means that more mishaps are more, not less likely. In fact, this is not Deepwater Horizon’s first incident. Deepwater Horizon has been a constant source of pollution since its relocation to its present location.
From 2000 to 2010, the Coast Guard issued six enforcement warning and handed down one civil penalty and a notice of violation to Deepwater Horizon. On 18 different occasions during that period, the Coast Guard cited the vessel for an “acknowledged pollution source.” – https://teakdoor.com/world-news/69948-deepwater-horizon-blowout-3.html
This begins to make sense. Deepwater Horizon has been polluting the ocean for some time now. Apparently, BP thought it could hide the spill, but with a spill so large, someone eventually noticed. After they had been caught, they decided to admit there was a spill.
However, if the spill were smaller, and it could have been covered up, we would have never heard about it.
BP Substituting PR for Action
Recently BP has put its PR into overdrive to deflect criticism regarding what will eventually become the greatest single ecological disaster in US history. Their full page ads taken out in various magazines declare that they will “make this right.” See below.
From https://adage.com/article?article_id=144196
Lying and Cheating
So first of all, BP is almost always lying. I have documented some of their lying, but as I have a full time job, I can not track all of their lies as everyday they tell more lies.
This site has created a little video which is a homage to BP’s lying.
So people are taking notice that if BP says one thing, most likely the opposite is true.
Up To This Point?
So far BP’s actions imply that it is handing the catastrophe as simply a cost of doing business, and that they will behave exactly as Exxon did, which paid for very little of the cleanup and other externalities caused by its spill. In fact BP was the main company which had the cleanup contract for the Valdeze spill and lacked the resources and equipment it was contractually obligated to have in the event of a spill. The fact is that with the Obama Administration in their back pocket, and with the collusion of both the US military and the Coast Guard in reducing the media access to the catastrophe, with environmental groups already bought off with contributions, and with even locals down in the Gulf silenced through their hiring by BP, there is very little BP will actually have to do. It is so powerful and politically connected that it is essentially immune to much in the way of legal obligation. Furthermore, this model is the new model left to us by the Bush Administration, and now perpetuated by Obama. It is a fascist system run by the major corporations, with the government there to provide the illusion of citizen control. This is the system that the conservatives have been clamoring for decades and is the eventual finish line of the “Reagan Revolution.” Welcome to the future everyone.
The Myth of Obama as a Populist
It is always interesting to see the difference between the image or myth of Obama and the reality of Obama. Don’t get me wrong, he is certainly preferable over Bush. However, too many of his policy decisions lean towards protecting concentrated power. His response to the BP tragedy is another example of this. Getting the spill categorized as a national security issue in order to drop a media blackout on the catastrophe, and preventing NASA from releasing satellite imagery which describes how significant the spill actually is, are the types of behaviors one would expect from the Bush Administration.
An excellent article in Global Research describes how Obama has sold out to BP and how is administration is acting to protect the company from its responsibilities.
Sources within these agencies say the White House has been resisting releasing any “damaging information” about the oil disaster. They add that if the ocean oil geyser is not stopped within 90 days, there will be irreversible damage to the marine eco-systems of the Gulf of Mexico, north Atlantic Ocean, and beyond. At best, some Corps of Engineers experts say it could take two years to cement the chasm on the floor of the Gulf.Only after the magnitude of the disaster became evident did Obama order Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to declare the oil disaster a “national security issue.” Although the Coast Guard and FEMA are part of her department, Napolitano’s actual reasoning for invoking national security was to block media coverage of the immensity of the disaster that is unfolding for the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean and their coastlines. From the Corps of Engineers, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency, Coast Guard, and Gulf state environmental protection agencies, the message is the same: “we’ve never dealt with anything like this before.”The Obama administration also conspired with BP to fudge the extent of the oil leak, according to our federal and state sources. After the oil rig exploded and sank, the government stated that 42,000 gallons per day was gushing from the seabed chasm. Five days later, the federal government upped the leakage to 210,000 gallons a day.
WMR has also learned that inspections of off-shore rigs’ shut-off valves by the Minerals Management Service during the Bush administration were merely rubber-stamp operations, resulting from criminal collusion between Halliburton and the Interior Department’s service, and that the potential for similar disasters exists with the other 30,000 off-shore rigs that use the same shut-off valves. – Global Research
Conclusion
The disaster with the Deepwater Horizon should never have occurred. However, this is what happens when deregulation is allowed. The plain fact is that companies do not value the environment as much as they value their profit maximization. After the financial crisis, it is more than apparent that our corporations will continue to impose negative externalities upon society as long as the society allows them to.
However, whenever deregulation is discussed, conservatives (who don’t seem to be able to conserve much), they bring up their tired notions of how deregulation will reduce business activity. When discussing this topic, industrial disasters are just one example of how under-regulated industry is. A child could figure this out, however, once one attains a Ph.D. in economics, it appears as if a lot of very obvious things suddenly become “complicated.”
References
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6430AR20100508?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
https://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/gulf_spill_is_really_a_river_o.html
https://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2010/05/coast-guard-admiral-compares-oil-spill-to-failed-mission-to-moon.html
https://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/bp-deepwater-horizon-well-permitted-18000
https://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0503/bp-ceo-its-not-our-spill/
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/sex-lies-and-oil-spills_b_564163.html
https://www.truthout.org/slick-operator-the-bp-ive-known-too-well59178
https://whitenoiseinsanity.com/2010/05/06/greg-palast-on-bp-oil-bp-lies-bp-prevaricates-bp-fabricates-and-bp-obfuscates/
https://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/5/bp_funnels_millions_into_lobbying_to
https://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/5/group_bp_has_one_of_the
https://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2011771949_oil04.html
https://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19799
https://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19068https://oilprice.com/