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The Naked Truth About the BP Disaster: Where There is Oil There is Tragedy

We are seeing those dots connected again with the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is easily shown by the careless, cavalier attitude of BP CEO, Tony Hayward, who has said that the largest oil spill in US history is a tiny spill in comparison to such a big ocean and that those miles upon miles of underwater oil plumes that stretches to who knows where and doing who knows what to the fisheries, the ecosystem, and the Gulf of Mexico for possible generations, is really, by their estimate, going to have a “very very modest impact.” The words ‘their estimate’ should have sent up a red flag. BP’s first estimate: the oil was not leaking. Second estimate: it was a l, 000 barrels. Third estimate: it was 5,000 barrels. Independent researchers have estimated the oil leaking from the ruptured well is perhaps 75,000-25,000 barrels. BP wasn’t even close and if they were, they certainly weren’t telling.

This funny kind of truth telling isn’t news to me. I’m a fourth generation fisherwoman and for the last twenty-one years of my life I have been fighting corporations such as these. It’s a hard thing to do, too, when corporations are self-regulating and the agencies in control are NOT in control. But then that’s all about corporate stranglehold, isn’t it? Who has the resource (and profits and power!) and who controls it. That’s why the BP action that we are fixing to engage in is so important to Unreasonable Women of the Earth and Codepinkers. The dragon that we wage against in an unjust war over oil is the same dragon in the Gulf of Mexico. Just pull back the mask. You’ll see.

Such is the calculus of corruption. BP has paid $1.8 billion for drilling rights in Canada’s sector of the Beaufort Sea, about 150 miles north of the Northwest Territories coastline, an area which global warming has freed of ice in summer months. and it wants to drill there as cheaply as possible. The problem is that a blowout like the one that struck the Deepwater Horizon, if it occurred near the middle or end of summer, would mean it would be impossible for the oil company to drill a relief well until the following summer, because the return of ice floes would make drilling impossible all winter. That would mean an undersea wild well would be left to spew its contents out under the ice for perhaps eight or nine months, where its ecological havoc would be incalculable.

BP and other oil companies like Exxon/Mobil and Shell, which also have leases in Arctic Waters off Canada and the US, are actually trying to claim that the environmental risks of a spill in Arctic waters are less than in places like the Gulf of Mexico or the Eastern Seaboard, because the ice would “contain” any leaking oil, allowing it to be cleared away. The argument is laughable. This is not like pouring a can of 10W-40 oil into an ice-fishing hole on a solidly frozen pond, where you could scoop it out again without its going anywhere. Unlike the surface of a frozen pond, Arctic sea ice is in constant motion, cracking and drifting in response to winds, tides and currents. Moreover, the blowout in the Gulf has taught us that much of the oil leaked into the sea doesn’t even rise to the surface at all. It is cracked and emulsified by contact with the cold waters and stays submerged in the lower currents, wreaking its damage far from wellhead and recovery efforts. Finally, as difficult a time as BP has had rounding up the necessary containment equipment and personnel in the current blowout 50 miles from the oil industry mecca of Texas and Louisiana, the same task would be far harder to accomplish in the remote reaches of the Beaufort, far above the Arctic Circle, where there aren’t any roads, much less rail lines or airports.

In fact, it was the remoteness of the Arctic staging area, and the lack of infrastructure, that has been the oil industry’s main argument against a mandatory simultaneous relief well drilling requirement for offshore Arctic drilling. The industry claims it would be “too difficult” to drill two wells simultaneously, as this would require bring in and supplying double the personnel, and two separate drilling rigs.

Allen said that he was “satisfied with the coordination that is going on,” and that BP is “exhausting every technical response” to the leak. He added that “There’s no reason to make a change” to the official response to the oil spill. When asked to clarify whether BP or the US government was in charge of the cleanup, Allen said that the two were working in “partnership.”

Allen’s remarks served to clarify points made earlier Monday by state and federal officials in Louisiana, who made hollow threats against the company, but did not question its controlling role in the cleanup effort. Janet Napolitano, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, echoed the statement of Interior secretary Ken Salazar that the government will keep its “boot on the neck” of BP. “We are on them, watching them,” she said.

Democratic Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois threw in a sound bite as well, saying “BP in my mind no longer stands for British Petroleum—it stands for Beyond Patience.” But these words only served to distract from his support for leaving BP in control of the cleanup. “Excuses don’t count anymore,” he said to the company, “You caused this mess, now stop the damage and clean up the mess. It’s your responsibility.”