May 2010 archive

Slick Operator: The BP I’ve Known Too Well

Greg Palast

I’ve seen this movie before. In 1989, I was a fraud investigator hired to dig into the cause of the Exxon Valdez disaster. Despite Exxon’s name on that boat, I found the party most to blame for the destruction was … British Petroleum (BP).

That’s important to know, because the way BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn’t happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government.

What’s so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.

That’s because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly cheap.

Whoo!  That was a bit of the old galvanic skin response, wasn’t it?  Wall Street’s high frequency trading programs exhibited a bout of uninhibited sympathetic discharge, and lots of hearts initially stopped dead before drum-rolling seconds later, amid abrupt increases in blood pressure, pounding headaches of sudden onset, profuse sweating, piloerection, blurred vision, and micturition and voiding reflexes.  The Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P took a huge, 1,000-point swan dive, while the Volatility Index shot up Ben Bernanke’s butthole like a bolt of lightning.  Exciting stuff!

I’m just glad everything is back to normal.

Every once in awhile the media mouthpieces attempt to explain to the public that the immigration issue is “complex.”  Would anyone here like to explain to me in real terms how this is so?  I am not going to name names or point fingers here.

(Crossposted at Orange and at Firedoglake)

Our combined energy and climate challenges and opportunities are incredibly complex and interrelated issues.  Throw in other resource challenges, economic challenges, and a myriad of other factors and, well, the complexity can overwhelm any and all.

In the face of Deepwater Horizon, the political obstacles to climate legislation, etc …, perhaps it is time to look for a straightforward statement as to how we should move forward to address our energy and climate challenges while improving our economic and security systems … Perhaps it is time to turn to

The Five Percent Solution

… a path toward energy security, economic prosperity, and  climate change mitigation.

With as much horrific news that emanates from the Gulf of Mexico and with so many warning signs regarding the climate it was welcome news to see this today.

In 2009, energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in the United States saw their largest absolute and percentage decline (405 million metric tons or 7.0 percent) since the start of EIA’s comprehensive record of annual energy data that begins in 1949, more than 60 years ago.  While emissions have declined in three out of the last four years, 2009 was exceptional.  As discussed below, emissions developments in 2009 reflect a combination of factors, including some particular to the economic downturn, other special circumstances during the year, and other factors that may reflect persistent trends in our economy and our energy use.

EIA.gov