Slogan reads "We're bringing Oil to American Shores"

I don’t often climb on to a soap box so I hope regular viewers of this Blog will tolerate this exception, especially those in the US, for whom this has been written.

The oil leak from a BP installation in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico has been world news and justifiably so because it does constitute a major event and it has already been very disruptive, for example of deep water fishing off the Gulf Coast of the USA, which has been banned over large areas.

I was on vacation in Florida as this incident started so I had the opportunity to see how it was handled by the US media and by the US politicians and the BP executives who found themselves having to answer challenging questions.

I am as disappointed as anyone that this incident occurred at all and also that sufficiently reliable contingency arrangements had not been made to prevent significant leakage even if, as BP have explained, it needed a combination of seven failures (of safety devices or systems) to allow leakage to become uncontrolled in the way it did.

But a very large leak of oil and gas there has been and despite the use of vast quantities of dispersant chemicals, some pollution from the well is getting ashore and there is quite a lot of it on the surface around the well area, some of which has now end up coming ashore as oil or oil derivatives.

The US media were very quick to start calling it a disaster and the US politicians, and especially the Senator from one of the States which was at risk of pollution, took a very strident and anti-British line from the outset.  BP was responsible for the oil exploration and BP is a British Company and that was enough; let’s blame those foreigners for messing up America’s back yard; this would never have happened if Americans were in charge!

But the first BP executives to be interviewed on TV, the people who had been in charge of BP’s Gulf operation, were American Nationals and it has emerged that the owners of the Oil Rig which caught fire was a Company (contracted to BP to do the drilling etc) which until two years ago, when it moved its HQ to Switzerland, was an American Company.  Oil exploration in the Gulf is of course regulated by the US Government, and regulation extends to detail specification of approval of all sorts of things, including for example the particular chemicals which were to be used as a dispersant in the event of an oil spill.

It quickly became clear that BP started pulling all the stops out to deal with the problem very quickly indeed and their global Chief Executive took responsibility for media communication as well as accepting on behalf of the Company responsibility for dealing with the problem.  Not once did he try to blame anyone else or make any excuses; he just made it very clear that BP was going to pull out all the stops to fix the problem and repair the damage.  It was equally clear early on that the American Authorities had nothing useful to contribute; they even admitted they were entirely dependent on BP’s technology and BP’s engineers to fix things and they had no relevant skills or resources at their disposal.

The US Authorities still seem to me to be doing little more than demand more information and more action from BP and I’ve seen no evidence of any constructive input at all.   The Regulatory Authority which had previously (and quite specifically) approved the dispersant chemical which BP had on standby as a contingency, announced shortly after the start of the problem that (in response to media pressure) it was withdrawing its approval of this chemical, which BP was by then deploying in very large quantities in an attempt to prevent or at least minimise the oil which got ashore.  This was because concerns had been expressed about its environmental safety and there might be better alternatives.  They wanted BP,  in the midst of everything else it was trying to do to staunch the leak and organise containment and cleanup of the spill, to switch to using another chemical because of these environmental concerns.

On the day I returned to UK there were pictures in the newspapers of an American citizen trampling on a Union Jack on the steps of his City Hall.  he looked quite pleased with himself for the gesture he was making.   Since then we’ve had reports of the US President demanding that BP suspend any idea of paying dividends to its shareholders and lodge with the US large sums of money to facilitate the payment of compensation claims, in addition to the huge sums of money which it’s already been spending.

It would clearly be desirable for this oil leak to have been prevented and likewise the loss of life which resulted from the Oil Rig Fire.  But it has happened, presumably because of some failures in design or in the operation of safety systems.  This will hopefully lead to lessons being learned, to the benefit of deep water oil exploration all over the world.  I admire the way the BP executives have handled themselves and the way they committed their Company to accepting its responsibilities and doing everything possible, as quickly as possible, to deal with the leak.  They must have known very quickly that they were in deep trouble and they haven’t tried to run away from their responsibility or to pass the buck in any way.

But I haven’t been at all impressed by the American Media or the US politicians, including President Obama, in their handling of this problem.  And I really didn’t like seeing an American trampling on our National Flag to show his disapproval.  I appreciate that he probably doesn’t represent anything much more than an ignorant and emotional individual response in front of the cameras but nevertheless he would find it grossly offensive if I trampled on his national flag and he should understand that’s what he is doing to ours.  We British don’t take as much trouble to fly our Flag or treating it with such elaborate care when we take it down and fold it up as Americans do, but that doesn’t mean we’re not proud of it and proud of our Country – and proud of our troops who are fighting and dying alongside Americans in Afghanistan and did so in Iraq.  When bad things happen, such as blue-on-blue strikes by American forces on their Allies, we aren’t happy about it and we expect real efforts to be made to avoid further repetition, but we don’t over react.  Nor should Americans and nor should the American Media; the guy in Louisiana who stood on our Flag might be an ignorant fool but professional journalists are educated people and they should know better than foster and publicise behaviour like this.

In the week or two before this Oil Rig caught fire the US media were full of stories about the need for America to become self-sufficient in oil so that it could no longer be held to ransom by foreign oil producers.  Oil exploration in the Gulf was being lauded as a way of achieving this, hence the T Shirt slogan which BP’s American arm producew to trumpet it’s contribution.  America wants to have cheap gasoline and home-grown production too and no one was complaining about oil production in the Gulf before the problems developed.  America was happy that oil was to being produced in the Gulf and it shouldn’t expect to have the benefits, including taxation and other revenues from BP’s Gulf activities,  without also accepting that there are risks.

Drilling for oil in waters which are a mile deep sounds like a pretty risky activity to me and if it was happening around UK, I would hope and expect that my Government’s Regulators were properly on the case.  We regulate nuclear power station pretty tightly even though it costs a lot to do so and adds to the cost of the electricity they produce; it presumably needs to be the same with deep water oil extraction and the Government should be on the case.  I would expect our Government to kept an eye of the way they were going about it and to make sure it couldn’t cause big problems and presumably the US people expect their Government to exercise similar responsibilities.

Whatever mistakes BP or its contractor companies may have made, the disaster in the Gulf is, ultimately, the result of  a failure of Regulation by the US Authorities.  Deep water oil exploration was being conducted under the direction and regulation of American Nationals in waters which are off the American shore.  Although BP is  registered as a British Company it’s a multinational giant and there are almost as many US shareholders in BP as there are British.

So I would be grateful, American citizens and politicians, if you would resist the temptation to attack my Country and especially trample on my Country’s Flag, just because there’s a big problem on your patch and on your President’s watch which needs fixing and which you suddenly find yourselves ill equipped to deal with.  I’m not so blind that I can’t see when our politicians are trying to pass the buck when they find themselves scandalously ill-prepared and I suggest that you shouldn’t be either.