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BP Oil Disaster a Distant Memory for Oil Companies Eyeing the Gulf Again
While energy companies continue profits, residents struggle with health effects of Deepwater Horizon disaster
BP's Deepwater Horizon oil catastrophe in 2010 appears to be a distant memory for oil companies drilling in the Gulf today.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil rig ablaze. (photo: U.S. Coast Guard) The Houston Chronicle reports:
"We are quite optimistic on the outlook for the Gulf of Mexico," Schlumberger [the world's largest provider of oil field services and equipment] CEO Paal Kibsgaard said during a conference call with analysts. "We should be at pre-Macondo levels for deep-water drilling rigs by the latter part of 2012."
BP itself seems to be unaffected by the disaster. The Telegraph reports:
Bob Dudley said that BP had in fact had its best year in three decades for gaining new exploration acreage last year – despite the damage the company's reputation took after the spill and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig in April 2010.
Yet the effects of the BP oil disaster are far from over for many of the residents in the area. Facing South reports:
A new video from the Louisiana Environmental Action Network features first-hand accounts from mothers and grandmothers about the chronic health problems afflicting an alarming number of children who live in the Gulf. Watch it here:
A month ago Shell was forced to shut down a rig in the Gulf of Mexico after a leak.
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Show AllOnly 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.
You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.
The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.
As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.
It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.
The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?
Any other questions?
See complete story at: http://www.truthout.org/node/1239
They have returned to drill in the Gulf confident that the American government will make sure that American southerners shoulder the costs of whatever risks BP finds it convenient to take.
And why would they not think so? They have tested it all over.