American BP Haters

[JamesHunt]

If you want to fuck them, cycle to work. Your consumption is a fucking disgrace!

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/en...il-consumption

[trish]

If you're urging individuals to stem their [consumption] it seems more appropriate to look at oil consumption per captia. I only had the patience to convert a third of the above chart. Perhaps someone else will be ambitious enough to do the other two thirds. The U.S.A. seems to be the second biggest user, behind (drum roll please) Canada!

U.S.A. ----------2.811 gallons per person per day
China -----------0.24
Japan-----------1.65
Russia----------0.86
India-----------0.10
Germany------1.26
Brazil----------0.52
Canada--------2.99

[hippifried]

Those dog sleds use a lot of oil between igloos, do they?

[trish]

Those dog sleds use a lot of oil between igloos, do they?

I'm guessing that as well as shorter days, shorter summers and bigger home heating bills. (probably have more industry per capita up there then here in the States too ).

[hyperspace]

How about Dow Chemical properly compensates the thousands who died at Bhopal.

Then BP can start on the Pelicans.

[JamesHunt]

Judging by Tony Hayward's response, he ain't going , and neither is BP. It's all a farce

Hypocrisy of the multinationals vs government

He doesn't give a shit!

[Cuchulain]

How about Dow Chemical properly compensates the thousands who died at Bhopal.

Then BP can start on the Pelicans.

You have a valid point. These big corporations have been out of control for a long time. The recent Supremes decision is only going to make it worse. We need to get the money out of politics. Corporate scum have nothing but contempt for governments, laws and people.

But we still have to do something about the 'pelicans'.

[Cuchulain]

Judging by Tony Hayward's response, he ain't going , and neither is BP. It's all a farce

Hypocrisy of the multinationals vs government

He doesn't give a shit!

That arrogant prick. I wanted to pull that pathetic rug right off his head. The clowns asking the questions were no better. It was all political theatre.

[trish]

As of today more than 146 million gallons of oil have leaked into the Gulf of Mexico from British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon site. The oil industry admits this is a bad spill, but not the worst. The Gulf War oil spill in Iraq spilled 462 million gallons of oil. There’s still hope, however, that the Deepwater Horizon spill can beat the world record; it’s gushing oil at a rate of 60 thousand barrels per day (which is 1.89 million gallons every day) and it probably won’t be sealed for another two or three months.

Even as the oil continues to pour into the gulf and onto its shores, cleanup efforts are underway. The optimists among us tell us that the shrimp beds, estuaries and beaches will begin to recover in a couple of years. Keep in mind that 16% of the oil lost in the Exxon Valdez accident (over twenty one years ago) still pollutes the ecology of Prince William Sound.

Can we be assured that more attention to safety and stricter regulation will eliminate accidents of this magnitude? Of course not. The probability of a serious spill will always be significant regardless of the precautions taken. It will only be a matter of time until the next spill. In short, if we continue offshore drilling, there will always be, on average, a significant rate of oil spillage. The only thing regulatory and safety precautions can do is attempt to keep the average rate of ecological damage below the rate at which the ecology can recover. If successful, we can look forward to waters, beaches, estuaries, shrimp beds and fisheries that are perpetually polluted and perpetually recovering; not pristine, not healthy but at least not dying. This is our best possible future if we continue offshore drilling.

A worse scenario is the fishing, shrimping and tourist industries are sacrificed to the oil economy. When the oil is depleted (as were the less expensive inland wells) and the roughnecking jobs are gone, there will be no backup economy, no fish to capture, no shrimp to harvest, no beaches to lure tourists; just dead animals covered in muck.

The lure of money is just too difficult for some to resist. Offshore drilling will continue. We need severe safety regulations and economic controls in place. But if greed is the problem, greed will be the only solution. As oil becomes more and more difficult to obtain, alternative energies will become by comparison more lucrative, hopefully sooner than later. The trouble with relying on market forces to solve our problems is that we’re essentially ceding our governance to the greedy.

[Niccolo]

I was disappointed by Obama's response, to say the least. His insistence on calling the firm "British Petroleum" was quite appalling. As if the UK had somehow done this deliberately to America. Everyone who lives in the NE corner of the UK and/or is involved with the oil industry remembers Piper Alpha. That platform was owned by Occidental.

Obama needs to remember that we've had our disasters too. Just recently a gearbox problem with Super Puma helicopters led to some devastating incidents in the North Sea. The oil business is inherently risky. America of course is a major consumer of fuel, and the American government has always been happy enough to have big firms like BP working in their back yard to get oil, rather than pay other countries for it.

It's an indication though of how Obama thinks though, that he would make such racist comments. After all, BP (not "British Petroleum") has existed as a business entity since 2001, and prior to that, the firm was called BP Amoco (following a merger with Amoco in December 1998. ) If Obama wants to go back in time and talk about firms that were operating in the oil business years ago, then he needs to put whatever he wants to say about Britain in the proper context by remembering all the Brits working for Occidental who lost their lives on Piper Alpha.

Of course, there's absolutely no need to go down that road. Let's all go back to 1998 so I can slander the Brits? What a prick! What on earth did Obama think he would achieve by making racist comments in the face of a disaster?

Taking a slightly wider view, don't you think it's funny how Obama has only been in power for five minutes, and he's gone out of his way to insult and alienate both Israel and the UK?

Funny that, eh ... almost as if Obama has his own, secret, agenda.

That couldn't be true... could it?