It’s been close to a month since the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig
exploded and sank into the Gulf of Mexico, just 45 miles south of the
already beleaguered gulf coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. The
ensuing oil spill may well surpass that which followed the wreck of the
Exxon Valdez, which poured over 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s
Prince William Sound in the spring of 1989. British Petroleum, which
was the operator of the oil platform, had been leasing the rig from the
deep seas drilling conglomerate TransOcean. BP initially estimated the
daily oil spillage to be 1,000 barrels. Within a week of the disaster,
that figure was ratcheted upwards by the United States National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be 5,000 barrels daily. This
works out to 220,000 gallons of oil a day or a loss of better than a
million barrels weekly.
According to the U.K. Guardian,
specialists in the industry believe the explosion that shook the
Deepwater Horizon on April 20th was caused by a methane bubble that
traveled through the drill column of the platform, which ruptured seals
and barriers before actually bursting. The explosion claimed the lives
of 11 workers on the platform, and 115 more had to be lifted out away
from the conflagration. British Petroleum officials assert that
blowout prevention devices installed as a safety feature within the
industry failed, but information coming from such sources as BP raises
questions about the depth of commitment BP had in installing such
devices, which might have at least limited the spill’s actual scope.
The
spill remains out of control at the time of this writing, and industry
officials as well as government oversight specialists do not foresee
any resolution to this crisis until the end of June. Assuming the daily
loss figure is accurate – and there are a number of specialists who
think the above projections are conservative – there can be at present
no accounting for the immense damage this spill will very likely
inflict upon the crabbing and shrimping industries of the South Eastern
United States, or the further destruction of the already fragile
ecosystem in that region.
Current strategies employed by
British Petroleum to plug or cap the spill (big underwater domes, small
underwater domes, industrial robots, and siphons, according to the Wall Street Journal)
have seen only minor successes, or have been derailed by rapidly
freezing mixes of natural gas and water caused by frigid water
temperatures found at deeper ocean depths, even in the Gulf of Mexico.
They have also used a highly toxic chemical called Corexit, an Exxon
Company-manufactured dispersal agent which poses substantial dangers to
both aquatic and aviary wildlife. None of these efforts or solutions
has even taken into account how the spill may affect the ecologies and
economies of Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean Basin, or northern
South America. Since no one is sure how the oil carried by ocean
current will disperse, all of these questions are wide open.
The
surface area of the spill is quite large, and satellite imagery
suggests it could be several times larger than current estimates,
possibly the equivalent in length and width to the island nation of
Puerto Rico. Ocean borne tar deposits have already washed up into areas
west of the Mississippi Delta and have been seen as far east as the
Alabama border of Florida.
Surely, British Petroleum is largely
to blame. After all, it was BP which had recently acquired oversight of
the Texas City Oil Refinery when an explosion at that site occurred in
2005, killing 15 workers, injuring close to 180 more, and requiring
emergency services for 43,000 people in the vicinity. BP had already
acquired a reputation for its industry practices in Alaska, where
disintegrating pipe welds had resulted in spillage of 200,000 gallons
of oil into northern tundra just a few years before the Texas City
disaster. The company has a somewhat consistent history of operating
rather haphazardly in an industry which entails a great deal of
industrial and environmental risk.
Be this all as it may,
British Petroleum is far from the sole culprit. Other corporate
heavyweights are as culpable as is BP. According to the Kansas City Star
in an article posted May 11th, the main players in the Deepwater fiasco
are spending a great deal of time pointing their fingers at each other.
When British Petroleum, Transocean and that noble friend of the working
poor, the Halliburton Corporation, appeared before Senate hearings led
by the United States Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, all
these fine entities took turns “naming names.”
Lamar McKay of
BP argued that since the blowout prevention devices were owned by
Transocean, they were largely to blame. Transocean CEO Steve Newman
turned and suggested that since Halliburton was the cementing
contractor, and hence, “responsible for encasing the well in cement and
ensuring its integrity, Halliburton was at fault. Halliburton is
certainly no newcomer to public charges of venality and corporate
manipulation, having literally made a killing via war speculation in
Iraq in recent years. But Halliburton exec Tim Probert turned and
dropped the charges back into BP’s lap, saying that since Halliburton
was sub contracting, and not owner of the well, it was contingent upon
BP as “owner of the well and ultimate authority to decide how and when
various activities are conducted.”
And so we’ve come full circle. Must be that free market “efficiency” we’re hearing so much about these days.
And
let’s not forget the role of the government regulators and licensing
agencies, which, at least on paper, are supposed to defend the public
interest. And yet, their reaction to the spill was lethargic at best,
even after the experience of Katrina. Not to mention the fact that BP
was never prepared to deal with a disaster on this scale, despite their
claims to the contrary. Objectively speaking, it’s not unreasonable to
argue that BP is allowed wide latitude because of the other functions
it serves within the imperialist order. The company has been one of the
largest suppliers of fuel to the Pentagon since the onset of the
current U.S. campaign in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.
According to figures at the Defense Energy Support Center, BP attained
$2.2 billion dollars in revenue from sales to the United States Defense
Department just last year. And at the end of the day, business is
business. The chorus that proclaims as much is just getting started.
An article about the Deepwater Horizon disaster which appeared in the May 6th issue of the Economist
concerns itself more with the need of the western powers to prevent
potential nationalist elements in Africa, Iran, Venezuela and Russia
from taking a larger stake in the world oil markets. “The Gulf of
Mexico and the waters off Africa and Brazil are among the most enticing
prospects to which oil companies still have access,” if they want to
maintain their edge. Undersea oil exploration in the Gulf accounts for
a third of the U.S.’s oil production, argues the Economist, and the “lion’s share” of new fossil fuel discoveries.
In
the meantime, the working class population of the Gulf states, people
who have lived for generations on income generated by the small
fisheries, the crabbing and shrimping industries, are now at the
mercies of the sensibilities of huge conglomerates like British
Petroleum, Halliburton, and the largest company in the business of
undersea oil exploration, Transocean, the owner of the late Deepwater
Horizon. Transocean, according to its own business offices, has taken
great pains in the last few days to petition in U.S. District Court of
Texas under the Federal Limitation of Ship owner’s Liability Act in
connection with the recent casualty. Transocean claims this is
necessary “in order to defend the interests of its employees, its
shareholders, and the company” in that order. You have to hand it to
the ruling class; they always understand the importance of operatic and
symbolic gesture that is designed to protect their own behinds. Why,
word has it that President Barack Obama has registered his “livid
anger” at the situation. Watch out, world. Obama is about to give a
fine theatrical speech. As comedian Chris Rock might put it, some
trains are never late.
Incredibly, Transocean has actually turned
a profit from this disaster: it has collected $270 million in insurance
on the rig, while the cost of cleaning up the mess will in the end fall
largely on taxpayer’s shoulders.
As for the ecosystem endangered
by the demise of the Deepwater Horizon, the Brown Pelican and Blue Fin
Tuna that rely upon a less stressed environment in order to continue to
play their roles in the life balance of the planet, I guess they and
we’ll all just have to get over the ongoing murk in this new round of
ecological devastation. To paraphrase the late Washington State
Governor Dixie Lee Ray, it’s unfortunate that so many people get so
upset about a few greasy birds. But we do. Remember: “this land is our
land.”
Socialist Appeal and the International Marxist
Tendency wish to extend our condolences to the families of the
following workers, who died in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon
April 20th:
Jason Anderson Gordon Jones
Aaron Dale Burkeen Blair Manuel
Donald Clark Dewey Revette
Stephen Curtis Shane Roshto
Roy Wyatt Kemp Adam Weise
Karl Kleppinger
Brothers
and sisters, we will honor your memories and struggle on for a world in
which the right to work means a hell of a lot more than merely “knowing
the risks” and the right to die.
These kinds of disasters
need not happen, certainly not on this scale. And it is not just
British Petroleum, Transocean and Halliburton. All the mega
corporations on the planet make their obscene profits off the labor and
suffering of others, with complete disregard for the effects on the
environment and future generations. As with the banking industry, they
play games with the lives of millions, hysterically reject any kind of
government interventions, but are quick to pass the bill for the clean
up of these avoidable tragedies to the public.
This is yet
another example of why the working class majority of society needs to
take political and economic control into its own hands. This is why we
are for the nationalization of the oil and related industries under
democratic public control. The assets of these companies should be
seized and used to clean up the mess, and to retrain oil and coal
workers as we transition to renewable energy. Of course, the two
parties of Big Business are not about to do any of this. Only a
government that represents the interests of the working class majority
could even pose the need for such measures openly. Ultimately, only the
socialist transformation of society can ensure that we have truly
democratic control over production, distribution and exchange, in
harmony with the environment.
above article from http://www.socialistappeal.org
