Everything is soothed by oil, and this is the reason why divers send out small quantities of it from their mouths, because it smooths every part which is rough.
Pliny the Elder, Natural History
The British anger is really over the fact that Americans lack the stiff upper lip for which the British are so famous. Instead of just sucking it up and putting on a brave face we seem to be engaged in a constant state of whinging and it's hard for the British not to believe that it's nothing more than wanting to make them and one of their prized corporate citizens look bad.
In fairness to the Americans, one has to observe that the oil being spilled (the word that is consistently used to describe something that never having been contained except by nature, was hardly capable of being "spilled") is having a devastating effect on the environment and its inhabitants. Millions of people are having their lives irreversibly altered if not shattered with no prospect of returning to a pre-spill way of life during their lifetimes, presidential promises to the contrary notwithstanding. The environment will be irreversibly altered for hundreds of square miles with no prospect that the life contained therein will recover within the foreseeable future.
And it's not that BP (referred to as "British Petroleum" by some commentators, in an attempt, the British think, to create more anger towards their country) did not do everything within its power, sort of, to protect against the very disaster that occurred. So thorough was BP that in the response plan that it furnished the government describing how it would deal with disasters, it said it had plans to protect "Sensitive Biological Resources" in the Gulf. It defined those resources to include "Sea lions, Seals, Sea Otters and Walruses." That shows an amazing thoroughness since sightings of any of those creatures in the Gulf have, in recent centuries, been extremely rare. (During the recent congressional hearings in which executives from other companies that were drilling in the Gulf testified, it was disclosed that many of the response plans prepared by them also promised to protect those animals.)
BP also identified its "primary equipment providers in the Gulf of Mexico Region for deployment of spill response resources on a 24 hour, 7 days a week basis." One of those providers, identified in a link on the proposal, was to a Japanese Home Shopping site but that was just a mistake and does not suggest BP was negligent. The fact that it identified them was significant even though when the event occurred the providers, including the Home Shopping Network were, contrary to the representation, unavailable. In its response plan it also says it has "personnel, equipment, and materials in sufficient quantities and recovery capacity to respond effectively to oil spills from the "worst case discharge scenarios" covered by the plan and it is almost certain that it believed that.
A rarely mentioned fact about the response plan is that it is almost 600 pages in length. That, too, speaks to the thoroughness of BP's work.
Considering all of the foregoing, it is easy to see why the British are so upset by criticism of the company and its consequential damage to BP's reputation.
BP is a very important British company. It has historically paid really good dividends and its stock is widely held by teachers' unions, pension funds, etc. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London spoke for the British public when he expressed worry about "anti-British rhetoric" and "name-calling" from American politicians. George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer said it was important to remember the "economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America." (The Americans will be forgiven if that benefit has been somewhat eclipsed by the disaster.) In addition, BP pays close to $1.4 billion in British taxes and any diminution in that amount would harm the British economy.
The Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, was quoted in the New York Times as calling the American response "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company." Sir Chrisopher Meyer, a former British ambassador to the U.S. said that the British government "must put down a marker with the U.S. administration that the survival and long term prosperity of BP is a vital British interest." That is easy for Americans to overlook when contemplating the long-term survival and prosperity of residents of the gulf coast.
I am taking the concerns of the Brits to heart. I will, as I hope this column proves, say nothing but nice things about BP. And irrespective of what happens to the people who live on the Gulf coast, I join BP's president in expressing the hope that he can get his life back. I am sure this has been an unpleasant and stressful time for him.
Christopher Brauchli can be e-mailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu. For political commentary see his web page at http://humanraceandothersports.com
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Maybe you should also remind them that there's also a hell of a lot of American anger being pointed to Americans? (The pols and watchdog agencies that were responsible for this mess as well?)
Finally, despite BP's advertising efforts in the states to rebrand themselves as "Beyond Petroleum," they're still known as "British Petroleum." And a question:
What exactly are they doing that takes them Beyond Petroleum?
It's a multi national corporation and it's only allegiance is to itself and profits.
But the failure itself begins with BP engaging in corrupt practices and ends with the two BP executives on the Deepwater Horizon. One of them pleaded the Fifth and the other declined to testify at the joint MMS/USCG hearing on the cause of the explosion....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/top-kill-results-awaited_n_591522.htmltml
Transocean rig worker Truitt Crawford said: "I overheard upper management talking saying that BP was taking shortcuts by displacing the well with saltwater instead of mud without sealing the well with cement plugs, this is why it blew out."
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/29/95064/oil-spill-is-taking-a-toll-on.html?#ixzz0pMxCVZxT
Many are especially concerned that two top BP executives aboard the rig, known as "company men," didn't testify last week at a joint U.S. Coast Guard-Minerals Management Service inquiry into the cause of the accident.
Robert Kaluza invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination; the other company man aboard the rig, Don Vidrine, was on an original witness list but also declined to testify because of an undisclosed illness.
Without their testimony, there's no public accounting of their decision-making,”
As an expert in oilfields in the Middle East, I offered BP the following simple technique that can instantly plug the well. Though BP admitted it can work, it wouldn't implement it because it will kill the Well.
PLUGGING BP WELL BY A STRING OF CEMENT-FILLED CASING PIPES:
{BP has to lower down the wellbore through the Blowout Preventer a string of 18" Casing Pipes connected together 500-1000 ft long after being filled with cement}- Finito!
BP Well will instantly be plugged and there will be no need for the Relief Wells. They have assortment of Casing Pipes onboard their platform in the Gulf. The annular space between the Casing Pipe String and the well walls will be filled by pumping cement. The whole operation will take few hours.
REQUEST YOUR CONGRESSMEN TO INVITE ME TO FACE BP EXECUTIVES TO IMPLEMENT THIS SOLUTION AND END THE NIGHTMARE
Eng. Hodieb Khalifa
Cairo - Egypt
hodieb_khalifa yahoo
002-0163427827
And that is the problem. Nobody respectable was blaming Britain as a country, just the arrogant company that allowed this disaster to happen. For British politicians and media to make this out to be a U.S. vs. Britain issue because the words "British Petroleum" were used in press reports is a public relations disaster on their part, especially as I personally have never heard anyone pointing fingers at the British for this.
Perhaps what this tempest in an oil slick is reflective of is that Britain is afraid of one of its biggest firms going under or being significantly damaged financially because of this since there are many powerful Brits as well as unions there who own BP stock (btw, the company's owners are comprised of a large chunk of Americans, too).
This makes things even worse because a case can be made that British pols now have a personal and national interest in trying to play down the damage that has been done by the spill.
Unfortunately, as Heyward has shown. a lot of Brits look down on Americans and that only intensifies the friction. Therefore, the best thing the British press, politicians and public can do is to keep its mouth shut over criticisms of BP. Otherwise, can you say, "goodbye to Americans traveling to Britain on holiday"?