BP-bashing Americans could jeopardise British pensions. They should remember 1988 – Telegraph Blogs

BP-bashing Americans could jeopardise British pensions. They should remember 1988 – Telegraph Blogs

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Henry Cave Devine on Jun 1st, 2010 at 6:08 pm

America gets whipped plenty by the international press and by its own journalists so cut out the self-pity for companies British. No one who is up-the-curve on this event blames BP solely and is not aware of the shared lack of responsible conduct by TransOcean and Halliburton for two but even larger the foul negligence on the parts of the White House (both past and present), various US government agencies, the US Congress (where huge amounts of blame need to be cast) for as close to gross negligence arising from “handholding under the table” and money passing hands between elected representatives and an industry as well as various State and Coastal Commissions who failed to do their job and took money for turning a blind eye.

It has all been couched under the guise of many public causes including “protecting America’s energy security” which may amount to one of the largest long-term outright frauds ever carried out by American government. But because it’s the US government and they are the ultimate “Teflon Don’s” nothing of any consequence will occur to punish them… with the exception of Obama whose name and image is now severely damaged probably beyond recovery.

All this taken into account BP was running the project and subcontracted to its industry partners. BP and the others have a potential joint and several liability on this disaster but BP was the lead: full stop. It does not help matters that BP has a long term reputation in the US oil patch for sloppy sometimes dangerous work and that BP chose partners at least one of whom has a similarly poor reputation, both with evidence to support the poor reputations. BP also ruined Amoco subsequent to acquisition and succeeded in dismantling one of Americas finest energy companies and finest companies in general.

You also need to remmeber that BP is essentially an agglomeration of outsourcing and sub-outsourcing far more extensive than the rest of the energy companies. John Brown cut costs by doing this but “extreme” outsourcing” can also result in loss of quality and control over time, and this is what has happened in this disaster situation. Yes, they have had substantial profits but now the cost of acquiring those profits will come back to haunt them.

The affected states of Texas, Louisiana and Florida have a right to not only litigate against BP and the others but to sieze assets to assure performance under cleanup operations. The Environmental Protection Agency has wide sweeping rights to litigate in what amounts to their own court system. Don’t expect the White House nor previous administrations to assume any financial liability: all they will do is the ceremonial “falling on their swords” that Obama has done. But that’s meaningless when it comes to fixing the problem no matter who falls on their swords, and the same governmental corruption will continue (particularly the Congress and governmental agencies)… and in the end it will cost BP many billions of dollars to correct the effects of this event. All the swords will be pointed at BP and the hands will be scraping every pocket that BP has going forward for the next decade or so.