Corporate Terrorism

Commentary By Ron Beasley

Let's call the Gulf disaster what it is - terrorism.  It wasn't done for ideology or religion it was done for profit.  It wasn't intentional but it was inevitable.  It is well on it's way to creating more economic damage than the attacks of 911 and although it didn't kill 3,000 in minutes it will indirectly kill more than that over the next decade or more.  It wasn't the result of capitalism because in this age of multinational corporations and the WTO we don't have capitalism we have an irresponsible plutocracy. The worst case scenario a month ago is the best case scenario today.  The worst case scenarios today are apocalyptic, see here and here.  There is serious talk in the oil industry itself that BP won't be able to stop the leak - the well itself is simply too broken.  If this is true like the Dust Bowl we will see mass migrations from the Gulf of Mexico not just because of economic displacement but to escape the health impact of dangerous volatile organic compounds.

The New York Times takes a look at the corporate terrorist responsible for all of this.

�We have to get the priorities right,� the chief executive of BP said.
�And Job 1 is to get to these things that have happened, get them fixed
and get them sorted out. We don�t just sort them out on the surface, we
get them fixed deeply.�

The executive was speaking to Matthew L. Wald of The New York Times,
vowing to recommit his company to a culture of safety. The oil
giant was adding $1 billion to the $6 billion it had already set aside
to improve safety, the executive told Mr. Wald. It was setting up a
safety advisory panel to make recommendations on how the company could
improve. It was bringing in a new man to head its American operations �
the source of most of the company�s problems � who would make safety his
top priority. And on, and on.

That interview didn�t take place this week � a week in which BP was
excoriated in Congress for the extraordinary safety lapses that led to
the Deepwater Horizon rig disaster, while also being strong-armed by President
Obama into putting $20 billion in escrow to compensate victims.

No, the interview took place nearly four years
ago, after BP�s previous disaster on American soil, when oil was
discovered leaking from a 16-mile stretch of corroded BP pipeline in
Prudhoe Bay in Alaska. And that was just a year after a BP refinery
explosion in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds
more.

As we are seeing in the Gulf safety was still not BP's top priority - it was still profit and to increase that profit BP did just about everything it shouldn't have in the Gulf.

Or take the Deepwater Horizon disaster itself, which was preceded by so
many instances of corner-cutting and poor decision-making that an
accident was practically preordained. Drilling one of the deepest wells
in history, the project used only one strand of steel casing, when it
should have used at least two. Halliburton
recommended that BP use 21 �centralizers,� which help ensure that the
well doesn�t veer off course as it goes deeper into the earth, but the
company used just a half-dozen. BP failed to conduct a crucial test to
make sure that the cement holding the well at the bottom of the sea was
sturdy enough.

And the engineers for BP on board consistently ran roughshod over
subcontractors like Halliburton, who openly worried that BP was making
decisions that could have catastrophic consequences. �This is how it�s
going to be,� one BP engineer reportedly said, overruling
a contractor on the critical question of when to replace the drilling
mud � which keeps explosive natural gas from flowing out of the well �
with seawater.

What makes this all the more shocking is that BP was drilling what�s
called a wildcat well, meaning it was drilling in an area that no other
company had drilled before, so it had no knowledge of the conditions.
For most oil companies, that would be all the more reason to take extra
precautions. Yet BP did just the opposite.

Louisiana lawmakers propose prayer to stop oil disaster and that may prove to be just as effective as the next pony BP has in it's stable, the relief wells.