Obama and the spill

A sign put up by people in Louisiana who face the destruction of their environment and livelihoods

As Leftfield previously reported, the US is currently undergoing one of its worst environmental disasters of all time. Last month, an explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico started an oil spill of gargantuan proportions. For weeks huge quantities of oil have been pouring into a pristine natural environment, devastating the species that live in it as well as the lives of the people living along the Gulf coast. Gulf fishermen are likely to be left without a livelihood.

As the full weight of this catastrophe sinks in, attention is increasingly turning to the role of the Obama administration in supporting BP, the company that operated Deepwater Horizon.

BP is the fourth largest company on Planet Earth. As of 2007 it had $292 billion in revenue. They use some of that money to directly influence the American political process. In 2008, the year of the last Presidential elections, the biggest recipient of BP’s cash was Barack Obama, who got $71,051 for his campaign.

In 2009 BP allocated $16 million for lobbying Congress. They allocated another $3.5 million for the first quarter of 2010.

The year following Obama’s election, the US Department of the Interior’s Minerals Management Service exempted the Deepwater Horizon from a detailed environmental assessment, concluding that the risk of a massive spill was unlikely. This followed intense lobbying by BP to have their rig exempted from the rules of environmental protection laws. In a letter to the White House, BP said the waiver would “avoid unnecessary paperwork and delays.” Those assessments that did take place claimed, in accordance with BP, that a spill like the one currently going on was impossible.

The massive spill seen from space: note the scale

Considering the billions to be gained in profits, BP must have considered the money they put towards getting Barack Obama elected money well spent.

In their application to drill, BP themselves admitted they weren’t going to put in place any further environmental protection measures than the bare minimum required by regulations.

Kierán Suckling, executive director of the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity, said the federal waiver “put BP entirely in control” of the way it conducted its drilling.

“The agency’s oversight role has devolved to little more than rubber-stamping British Petroleum’s self-serving drilling plans,” Suckling said.

Freed from the possibility of proper inspection, it turns out that BP then went on to drill deeper than they had been licensed to. And a safety valve to turn off the oil in case of an explosion was not installed, because it was considered too expensive.

Since the disaster, Obama has struggled to look tough on the issue, claiming BP were completely responsible and will be made to pay. But this distracts from his own role, and the role of his government, in allowing this disaster to happen.

Since the US government declared Deepwater Horizon safe, 11 workers have gone missing, presumed dead. Oil gushes from the sea bed at the rate of 4000 barrels a day, and already covers an area larger than Puerto Rico. Efforts to cap the spill with a specially manufactured tower have so far failed, and the tower has had to be pulled out. Hundreds of people have already been made unemployed due to the devastation of fisheries, and as time goes on many more will lose their jobs. The damage to unique ecosystem of the Gulf will likely last centuries.

It seems unbelievable that BP or the Obama administration thought you could drill through 13,000 feet of rock below 5,000 feet of water without significant risk. But that’s the corrosive effect of capitalism: the people running BP, an entity with more power than most countries, cared more about the short term profits to be made than the centuries of damage they could do. The US government is corrupted and controlled by these powerful companies, and can’t be relied on to protect its own people.

Its beyond urgent that the global energy economy is taken out of these hands of these corporations. Putting energy in the hands of people, and meeting our needs on a not for profit basis is one of the most crucial issues facing the human race.

Updates: The Centre for Biological Diversity reports that even after the spill had begun, the Minerals Management Service has been offering waivers on detailed inspections, and continues to be nothing more than a rubber stamp for the drilling industry. So far, nothing has changed in the government’s pro-oil stance, which comes at the expense of living things that live near oil fields, including human beings.

In his latest column, Fidel Castro (the retired leader of the Cuban revolution) mentions the spill:

“Such developments as the recent environmental disaster in the Gulf of Mexico show how little the governments can do against those in control of capital. These are the ones who, both in the United States and in Europe, through the economy of our globalized planet decide the fate of the peoples.”