To date BP has coughed up $28 billion to settle claims while pleading guilty to fourteen criminal charges. When all is said and done the old Anglo-Persian Oil Company – owned by the bluest blood in Britain – could well go bankrupt. BP stepped up the pressure on Lafayette, LA lawyer Patrick Juneau, the court-appointed settlement administrator for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, which devastated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.If so it will get what its smug, condescending, patronizing shareholders deserve. In the wake of the horrific BP oil spill, the British Establishment spent the better part of a week lecturing on the perils of blasphemy in the colonies. Lord Norman Tebbit, former Thatcher Employment Secretary, had the temerity to accuse President Obama of “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political presidential petulance against a multinational company”. Sounded like the pot calling the kettle black. Daily Mail columnist Geoffrey Wheatcroft accused our seditious president of “hypocritical as well as demagogic” criticism of BP. Wheatcroft then went on to recount a pattern of disrespect that the US has shown the British dating to 1812. Disrespect? I guess Mr. Wheatcroft isn’t content with the “special relationship” that calls for US soldiers to die and US taxpayers to get soaked, whilst Royal Dutch/Shell gets the first Iraqi oil contract and BP the second. In a truly xenophobic, bigoted, demagogic, Aryan colonial master-inspired moment, another Daily Mail columnist named Melanie Phillips admonished Obama for “damaging aggression” against BP, blathering on like only a condescending Brit can do, that the guy we democratically elected, “does not reflect America’s traditional values or interests”. Longing for the slave trade were we, Melanie? A Daily Express headline warned that, “Obama Is Killing Our Pensions”. So riled was the still existing but now silent British Empire and its BP pensionados that the US ambassador to the UK was forced to insist in an interview that President Obama at once stop referring to their poor little oil giant as British Petroleum. How dare this upstart plantation manager invoke such nationalism in his dressing down of a descendent of the East India Company? Despite this shrill chorus of idle rich Anglo whining, naturally with the full and far bent over backing of its surrogate US Republican Party, Very British Petroleum, that persecuted “multinational company”, lost this battle with Democracy. The BP colonial dinosaur was forced to suspend dividends to the gentry for one year. They were pressured by the Obama Administration to set up a $20 billion fund to cover economic damage. Then in a charitable, if two-month belated act, Very British Petroleum/Amoco/ARCO/Anaconda/Multinational Company Formerly Above Reproach According To Lord Something Or Other (gasp!) apologized. But its Swedish chairman bungled even this, commencing to tell Gulf Coast residents how BP would look after “the small people”. Meanwhile Congress grilled the heads of the Four Horsemen- BP, Royal Dutch/Shell, Exxon Mobil and Chevron Texaco. Some were curious why the companies’ spill contingency plans looked so strikingly similar (collusion anyone?) Others were troubled by references to “saving walruses”, which haven’t lived in the Gulf for around 3 million years. Still others asked why a Florida scientist named Peter Lutz, who died in 2005, was still listed as the Cartel’s go-to guy in the event of an offshore disaster. Both Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson and Chevron Texaco CEO John Watson slammed and tried to distance themselves from BP. It was a pathetic display of contempt, cowardice and general sucking up. Meanwhile down in the Gulf, scientists monitoring the leak increased their estimate of the flow to 60,000 barrels/day. Before BP cut the riser pipe the flow was estimated at 20,000/day. After BP ramps up its capture and burn strategy, it says it will be able to sequester 25,000 barrels/day. That means there is now 15,000 more barrels/day spewing into the Gulf than before BP cut the pipe. Dividends? Small people? Disrespect? Divine Right of Kings was it? What are you people on? Had either Obama or Congress had the guts, they’d have told these smug contemptuous spoon-fed disrespectful shareholders to get their pampered puny selves out of their castles, jet on down to the Gulf of Mexico, get on some rubber gloves, and help clean up the big mess their “multinational company” made.
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 20:37:39 +0000
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