Slick politics!

I was impressed with an interview with Lord Digby-Jones in the early hours of this morning which pointed out that the reason that BP and others are pushing the envelope of technology and drilling a mile down is down to the US Government.

Mind you this disaster has implications for some other nations where this type of drilling is also to be found, let's hope they're reading the international news. As I read the reports and stories relating to this leak I find no halting of deep-water drilling and get the strange impression that apart from hanging out one company to dry, there is a whitewash and a continuance of drillingon the horizon. The Federal Commission being put together (with what looks like an oli rich membership in prospect) will, I fear in its conclusions, provide approval for deep-sea oil drilling and the American, oil greedy culture to continue. Meanwhile Obama continues to try to balance the needs of the people he serves and the oil reserves that nation needs and there's always the money that it brings to consider. (How ironic that BP is labelled as putting people at risk and cutting corners to gain more bucks - wonder of the Union Carbide survivors and bereaved found that just a little ironic?)

I was amazed to find just how many Americans have pension interests in BP, so they might applaud the attacks on BP now but they might also be able to repent in poorer retirement at a later date because of it!

BP's headquarters might be in the UK but all those who should be standing in the dock as culpable or complicit would have to include BP managers, Transocean, Anardarko (who are now attacking BP as having been unsafe in a move to distance themselves from the fall out) and a few advisors and officials from Obama's Administrations too and I would hazard a guess that the majority of these are Americans!

The biggest folly comes to light when it seems that drilling was permitted without any real idea of what one does when it goes wrong. Haliburton and Cameron International are trying to stop the leaks but it's like throwing a bottle up an alley - close, but no coconut! The moment the US Administration stopped people drilling shallow and pushed them to drill deep meant that this disaster (or one like it) was an inevitability waiting to happen.

A great cartoon on the topic from http://www.robsmithjr.com/