The British are Coming

In regard to the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster, oil giant British Petroleum—or BP as the British prefer to call it—has plenty of defenders in the UK, such as the right-wing Times of London. Op-ed writers like Martin Waller virtually claim that Barack Obama was “practically” handed the 2008 election by BP employee campaign contributions (or rather through a PAC, as Waller rather disingenuously suggests), and then “almost immediately” relaxed rules on offshore drilling. This is not precisely accurate, given the facts. BP’s “relaxation” went far beyond what U.S. companies have done, and the well in question began construction during the Bush administration. Waller also fails to mention that BP was forced to close 57 wells in Alaska that had been leaking, destroying habitat and contaminating Prudhoe Bay—all years before Obama became president; ditto for the Texas City refinery disaster that killed 15 people. In fact, the major U.S. culprit is Waller's ideological compatriot Dick Cheney, whose still-secret energy “task force” has been accused of advising the abandonment of “needless” safety procedures in off-shore oil drilling. Naturally, mainstream U.S. media like CNN and Fox News have also completely ignored this angle, preferring to lay the blame at Obama’s feet as well.

Waller attempts to whitewash BP’s image by pointing out that company has contributed millions to green energy efforts, but fails to mention that BP’s propaganda campaign to style itself as a “green” company is belied by the fact that it has repeatedly and “voluntarily” ignored environmental safeguards for the sake of profits. There is nothing like a hypocrite, or hypocrisy. No mention of BP’s intentional attempt to cover-up the nature or amount of the leak. Or that BP also has a reputation for harassing and destroying the lives of any employee who points out safety violations. Another Times op-ed writer, Bronwen Maddox, amusingly suggests that if Americans want BP to practice better safety standards, then they should be told (by Obama and Congress) that they should expect higher oil prices.

The question ultimately is whether all this represents a British business culture, a U.S. culture, or a combination of both. One thing for certain is that the British media seems just as eager to lay the blame at the door of the Obama administration as much of the U.S. media and the political right. Why? In the U.S. it is clearly for cynical political reasons, but for the British it appears that it would be “dangerous” to US-UK “relations” to lay any culpability on the British for BP’s indifference to adverse environmental impacts on U.S. territory because of its actions—or lack thereof.

Meanwhile the website of Energy and Capitol advises that despite the temporary beating BP stock has been taking, this sell-off was long overdue anyways, so no real harm done. BP stock will bounce back, so now is the time to “buy.”