President Obama is making the mistake of assuming that he can overcome his political difficulties in relation to the environmental disaster that has occurred in the Gulf by making statements expressly critical of BP. Some in the British media are playing this up as a spat between the UK and US - see here.
What is pretty clear is that the evidence suggests that BP can afford to clear up the environmental mess and compensate those whose interests have been damaged by the disaster ... but what BP cannot do is overcome a political spat caused by President Obama's own political difficulties. As to the finances, the sheer size of this company and its businesses (whose origins are global) is extraordinary - see here.
Interestingly, although BP used to be called British Petroleum, it has not had that name for some years - see here. Indeed, the 'BP' name was only adopted after the after the merger with AMOCO, an American company that itself did not have the best environmental record!
More worrying for the US is that, while BP is a UK registered company, BP is not an foreign company in the sense of ownership - American investors (individuals and institutions) own almost as many shares as UK institutional and individual investors - see here.
There is no doubt that the events in the Gulf of Mexico are an environmental disaster - and that BP's record is not as good as we would want of one of our largest companies - but when one looks at its competitors and their activities in, for example, the Niger delta in Nigeria, and you see that BP is not alone ...
We need to find methods to reduce our impact on the environment - and that will include increasing the standards and codes by which our largest companies conduct themselves. If the political message from the US overtakes the primary objectives in this case - that BP clear up and compensate for the damage caused - then there is a risk that the US will appear to have been little better than Russia in its conduct ... remember the shenanigans over Gas and the joint venture there, TNK-BP?
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2 comments:
If this unfortunate accident had to happen at all, the American people must thank thier lucky stars it happened to (solvent) BP and not some other smaller company that the US have allowed to drill in the Gulf. At least BP are footing the bill and getting it sorted. Few other compaies could do this
6 paragraphs but barely anything insightful to say. how do you do it, evan?
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