h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The very concept of trying to extract oil at a depth of 3000 feet is something that America needs to accept responsibility for.
Drilling in the Gulf is not justifiable in terms of economics, let alone engineering risk.
Bush and Co chose to go for oil in their own backyard because they feared relying on more straightforward extraction in the territories of foreign governments.
If you choose that course, you really ought to anticipate the fact that, if and when somebody drops one, then the sh*t is going to be on YOUR doorstep.
Like I said before, think of it as payback for shirked responsibility at Bhopal.
Or another way to look at it is to imagine that billowing plume of filth as a symbol of American irresponsibility in the management of the sixth element.
It really couldn't have happened to 310 million nicer people.

Feet? If only. I should have said metres!

Get real Effers. 11 dead (and insensitive remarks by BP chairman). Biggest ecological disaster in US history. Company with a woeful safety record. (Heard of the Texas City refinery?)

Does it take xenophobia for the Americans to be pissed off?

Do you feel some deep-seated patriotic connection with BP or something?

Pinniped:

>>The very concept of trying to extract oil at a depth of 3000 feet is something that America needs to accept responsibility for.

That is, however, a reasonable point.

>Do you feel some deep-seated patriotic connection with BP or something?<

No, not especially. But I like to call a spade a spade, and if it appears to me that xenophobia is happening, I'll call it...and not go all around the houses making excuses.

So the fact that BP totally ed up is irrelevant, then?

I mean really...they have. Even their disaster contingency plans were a joke - they talked about the potential impact on walruses. *Walruses*?!!! In the Gulf of Mexico? They have not exactly displayed competence either before or after the spill.

*What would you expect the American reaction to be?* Seriously? Should they be laughing it off?

>>
Aye, right. And nobody in this country still calls 'BT' 'British Telecom' either. Or 'BAE Systems' 'British Aerospace.' Etc. etc.
<<

Does your PM call them that? There is an expectation that statespeople use correct terms. When they don't, is it intentional or not?

I'm not sure it's xenophobia* so much as a kind of chauvinism and the US need to separate itself so it keeps a sense of its own self importance.

*really, does the US care that much about the UK one way or the other?

>>This was an accident. BP have accepted liability. They are spending huge sums trying to fix it. They are funding and leading a massive clean-up effort. They have said they will pay all the associated costs, including damages. What more can they be reasonably asked to do?
<< SWL

Accident?

>>>
Translate "industrial accident" into Russian and back into English, and what you get is "technogenic catastrophe". This term got a lot of use after the Chernobyl disaster. It is rather more descriptive than the rather flaccid English phrase, and it puts the blame where it ultimately comes to rest in any case: with the technology, and the technologists and politicians who push it.
<<<

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2010/05/american-chernobyl.html


"What more can they reasonably do?"

Stop deep water drilling.

Convert their business to sustainable energy and business practices, or at the very least stop greenwashing things.

>>As said above...*BP have responsibility for that*. (it was an exploration ship, btw, not a rig as such). What this means is that BP put out to tender for the drilling of a well. For any well there is a risk. If a contractor were expected to carry that risk, they would have to charge an awful lot for the drilling, to cover the necessary safety measures and insurance. This makes it expensive. So BP (as any company) agree to carry the risk: it makes drilling contracts cheaper. Thus BP are responsible for choosing a contractor that they feel is safe enough...and if they're wrong, it's ultimately BP's responsibility.
<< Ed

I'm sure that's normal business practice. Except that there is a line beyond which more people will be held accountable eg when there is negligence. I'm in agreement with Pinniped on this. I think BP, *and* the other companies involved, knew what they were doing - that they were taking really big risks with their fingers crossed. I think the other companies' involvement should be investigated too. But oh wait, they're US companies aren't they?

I still the US govt has as much responsibility for letting them drill there.

>>
*What would you expect the American reaction to be?* Seriously? Should they be laughing it off?
<<

That's just silly Ed. No-one is saying that BP aren't responsible. I just object to the hypocricy from the US govt. They allow such risk taking, and then they don't want to deal with their part in the consequences. To quote another thread boo hoo.

I am dually astonished that first and foremost, there isn't an app for this and secondly that no one has blamed Iran, which originally owned the company that became BP.

An app for this?

I say we take off and nuke the whole site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Funny you should say that, the Russians experimented using nukes to seal off deep wells. Although it (allegedly) worked, I think three-headed glow in the dark shrimp might not be popular in Louisiana

Well that would either work or well, then we'd be really ed

An interesting perspective on the pension funds/dividend question was given on the Beeb's news this morning.

Even though yes, for every £7 received in dividends by them £1 is from BP they did make the point that even if this dividend did not happen it's only one quarter's dividend from 1 year and that you would presume that the they would resume next time. Secondly that the losses to the pension funds would amount to much less than 1% of their total pots and that the damage done to them by the banking crisis in the last two years or so was vastly worse than this.

So that puts the crisis to the pensioners in perspective a little.

Aside from that, the little debate they had was really very similar to the rest of this thread so far.

I think there's a reason Obama keeps banging on about *British* Petroleum (well there's lots, but this might be another one).

The US is dependent upon plentiful, reasonably priced oil. As China and India start buying up Middle East supplies (Saudi now sells more oil to China than the West) the price would rise unless America found alternate sources. And it has, right next to them in the Gulf. If it turns out that it just isn't technically feasible to extract that oil, the US is in trouble. No administration could survive spiralling prices at the petrol pumps. So Obama *has* to portray BP as reckless, incompetent and (importantly) foreign. The implication being that good old US engineering skills wouldn't let this happen. Drive the nasty foreign company out and it will be ok to continue drilling.

It's all bollocks of course because this was an exclusively US operation. Non-US citizens are not allowed to work offshore in the Gulf, (unless it's an emergency capping operation, then the British engineers are allowed in to fix it).

But, if another disaster happens next year and one after that, America has a choice. See oil prices rise to the point that the entire US way of life has to change or secure alternate supplies. By force if necessary.

america and obama are playing the British/BP card to spin bad feeling away from them,

they don't want to take the hit in the polls

its classic.....!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAYMJnO9LBQ

(other countries are available)

its what american govt.s do!!!!!

Everything the US does is about ensuring cheap oil to finance its way of life. Iraq was about oil, Afghan is. Keeping their foot on the throat of Muslim power. Israel is just basically a giant US military base in the centre of the mid east.

All the time BP were benefitting the US they were BP. The minute there's a problem, they are British Petroleum..and any US involvement in the whole thing is airbrushed out.

At least Bush never pretended it was any other way.

The Pentagon is the world's largest consumer of oil?

http://www.groovygreen.com/groove/?p=1908

The largest air force in the world is the US air force and the second largest is the US Navy?

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070726115537AA1zG4e

OPEC is bigger than ANYTHING?

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/organization-petroleum-exporting-countries-opec.asp

Halliburton does more than take the place of soldiers who torture?

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2010/04/gulf-oil-spill-the-halliburton-connection.html

The firefighters sank the rig and caused the leak instead of a fire that would have burned the oil that leaks?

http://tkcollier.wordpress.com/2010/06/02/coast-guard-sank-oil-rig/

btw, the app and Iraq comment was about what the average USian is thinking at this moment.

The point is, like everything else in life, no one single, ultimate thing is responsible for a result, it is a myriad. I(t) am legion.

nuff. I just wasn't sure what you were meaning by 'app'.

>>The Pentagon is the world's largest consumer of oil?<<

Excellent. At some point, as oil becomes more scarce and more expensive, it will take more oil for the US to invade other countries than they get from the invasion