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Greed! (Slacking, Slicking, Sliding)
By mickielynn on 2010-05-16 07:52:26
I been thinking ‘bout how to talk about greed.
I been thinking ‘bout how to talk about greed.
I been wondering if I could sing about greed.
Trying to find a way to talk about greed.
[Chorus of the song "Greed" by Bernice Johnson Reagon of Sweet Honey in the Rock]
[caption id="attachment_1624" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Deep Horizon before sinking, photo by D.
Becnel"] [/caption]
When the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig geysered methane, burst into flames and exploded, in the deep waters of the
Gulf of Mexico 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana it took the lives of 11 workers. Before sinking and beginning to leak
massive amounts of oil into the Gulf waters it had been given a permit to drill in the deepest waters ever explored completely
without environmental review. There are now known to have been many acts of negligence and incompetence that
contributed to this disaster but at the root of all of this is one unifying factor: Corporate Greed. We now know that the
emergency shutoff valve, supplied by Transocean was leaking hydraulic fluid and its backup had one dead battery out of
two. Halliburton (the company that cemented the well) had poured too little cement for the ocean depth so that it broke
under pressure and allowed the gas leak to occur. But BP was the leaseholder. They’re the ones ultimately responsible under
the Oil Pollution Act of 1990. So British Petroleum makes a good study in the ways that corporate greed for short term
profits at the expense of people and complex ecosystems can create major catastrophes. First there’s BP’s safety record and
willingness to pay large fines in pursuit of much larger profits over the past several decades. Tyson Slocum, Director of
Public Citizen’s Energy Program reports that "BP has one of the worst safety records of any oil company operating in
America." One of the most serious recent events was a refinery explosion in Texas City, Texas in March of 2005 that
resulted in BP pleading guilty to a criminal felony violation of the Clean Air Act and paying over $150 million in fines for
the explosion that resulted in the deaths of fifteen workers, and serious injury to 170 other workers. Then there was the oil
spill a couple of years ago at Prudhoe Bay where the Department of Justice found that BP willfully under-invested in routine
maintenance that allowed the pipes to corrode and resulted in 200,000 gallons of crude oil released directly into the tundra.
In his May 5° article in Truthout, Greg Palast who investigated the Exxon Valdez disaster for the Chucagh Native villages
of Alaska's Prince William Sound in 1989 and is now an author and journalist reports that in order to save money at the time
of the Exxon Valdez spill when BP was in charge of carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans ("OSRP") which the company
itself drafted and filed with the government it violated its own plans. When the Valdez ran aground and began leaking oil
none of the equipment or workers were available. Then the same thing happened again about three weeks ago in the Gulf of
Mexico.
"That's because responding to a spill may be easy and simple, but not at all cheap. And BP is cheap. Deadly
cheap. To contain a spill, the main thing you need is a lot of rubber, long skirts of it called "boom." Quickly
surround a spill or leak or burst, then pump it out into skimmers or disperse it, sink it or burn it. Simple. But
there's one thing about the rubber skirts: you've got to have lots of it at the ready, with crews on standby in
helicopters and on containment barges ready to roll. They have to be in place round the clock, all the time, just
like a fire department; even when all is operating A-OK. Because rapid response is the key. In Alaska, that was
BP's job, as principal owner of the pipeline consortium Alyeska. It is, as well, BP's job in the Gulf, as principal
lessee of the deepwater oil concession... Where was BP's containment barge and response crew? Why was the
containment boom laid so damn late, too late and too little? Why is it that the US Navy is hauling in 12 miles of
rubber boom and fielding seven skimmers, instead of BP? Last year, CEO Hayward boasted that, despite
increased oil production in exotic deep waters, he had cut BP's costs by an extra one billion dollars a year. Now
we know how he did it..."
To summarize the neglect of the marine environment, the callous disregard of the effect of such a spill and the greed
involved: Three weeks after the disaster the oil has already reached land, contaminating wildlife sanctuaries. None of the
dramatic devices that BP has tried after the fact has slowed the spurting of oil. Scientists now estimate that instead of the 5,
000 barrels of oil that BP has said are leaking into the Gulf every day the actual leak may be ten to fourteen times larger.
After analyzing the video that BP released this past week of oil gushing from a pipe on the ocean floor, Purdue University
Professor Steve Wereley told National Public Radio the well could be releasing about 70,000 barrels of oil a day. That would
be the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez disaster every four days. Meanwhile, BP is raking in windfall profits. It has more
than doubled its first quarter profits in 2010 to $5.65 billion.
