Gulf of Mexico Oil Disaster Profit to Blame

It’s
been close to a month since the Deepwater Horison 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 gallons weekly.

According
to the U.K. Guardian,
specialists in the industry believe the explosion that shook the
Deepwater Horison on April 20th was caused by a methane bubble that
travelled 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 blow-out 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.

Big
Business

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 blow-out 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.

Govt
Regulators

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 Horison 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.

Workers

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
Horison. 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.

Environment

As
for the ecosystem endangered by the demise of the Deepwater Horison,
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.”

Tribute

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 Horison 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 honour 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
labour 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 intervention, but are
quick to pass the bill for the clean up and the far-reaching
consequences 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
nationalisation of the oil corporations and related industries under
democratic public control. The ill-gotten assets of these companies
should be seised and used to clean up the mess and retrain oil and
coal workers as we transition to renewable energy. Of course, the two
parties of Big Business in the US 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.