The Chris Moeller Archives

The BP Oil Spill

I'm back from New Orleans, where the music is as hot as ever, but where the water is becoming dirtier by the day, with special thanks to British Petroleum for helping to strengthen the case that the United States should-- at last-- nationalize its oil industry. As many as 210,000 gallons of crude oil have been gushing out of BP's undersea well each day after a rig explosion two weeks ago, and again the residents of the Gulf Coast are the most unfortunate victims of a man-made disaster instigated by failed policy, deregulation and purposeful industry neglect.

BP has been ordered to pay $485 million in fines and settlements to the U.S. Government over the last few years, according to Public Citizen, due to the environmental damage they had already inflicted, worker safety violations, and their attempts to manipulate the energy market. They've spent millions in lobbying against regulations that could have helped to avoid this recent catastrophe, and now we hear that the company has legal liability only up to $75 million for damages inflicted upon area businesses and government agencies, a veritable drop in the bucket for what's taking place off our valuable and vulnerable southern coast. The disaster this company is responsible for comes just a few weeks, incidentally, after President Obama co-opted for his own Sarah Palin's "Drill, baby, drill" policy position regarding off-shore drilling. Now will he (hopefully) be forced to revisit that error in judgment and/or ethics?

When my companions and I sat down for dinner on Thursday night in the French Quarter before menus that included boiled crawfish, shrimp creole, and blackened fish (the good "blackened," I guess that is now), we were advised by our waitress to make our seafood selections while the getting was still good. This last weekend of JazzFest 2010 was also quite possibly the last weekend for the foreseeable future in which local seafood would be available in dining establishments along the Louisiana wetlands. On Friday, local fishermen, shrimpers, and oystermen in the communities of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes were being gathered into a sort of make-shift disaster management team forced to assist BP with fending off the oncoming smelly and gunky black tide bound for the coastline, and forcing a now-tenuous relationship between fishing and petroleum industries that are usually so complimentary towards each other (oil rigs create artificial reefs advantageous for fishing) that the city of New Orleans features something called the "Shrimp and Petroleum Festival" on its annual events calendar.

BP, for its part, is casting blame towards the companies that operated and provided services on the rig, Transocean, and that name again, Halliburton; and corporation and contractors will certainly attempt to weasel out of as much responsibility as they can for causing this unprecedented natural disaster. Americans who love their low taxes will pay out-of-pocket instead (as they always do, anyway) through increased prices for food, at the pump, and for home fueling.

Refineries dot the low-lying, muddy and swampy landscape of Louisiana and Mississippi, yet despite being the neighbors and stewards of enough oil and natural gas to keep a small collection of Middle Eastern royals hip-deep in Western decadence for decades, the overwhelming majority of Gulf Coast residents live in poverty. The oil and gas extracted from their shores, our shores-- natural resources that rightly belong to the people of the United States are given away to corporate conglomerates for a song, while we accept shit back on the dollar, the same products refined and sold back to us at a mark-up of unparalleled industry profit, while the oil and gas companies simultaneously pollute our environs and we clean up their messes. That oil and gas rightfully belongs to you and me-- the American taxpayers-- and it's high time-- Mardi Gras-high time-- to demand back what is justifiably ours by nationalizing what is already a national resource. We'll pay less to cool and heat our homes, and to fill up our vehicles. We'll have real accountability and oversight in instances of misdeed or negligence, and a little more of that representative democracy we advertise so vigorously to the rest of the world.

posted by CM @ 1:39 PM