By Michael Baxter 10 Jun 2010 [0 Comments | 689 views]
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Well, it was inevitable, but all of a sudden the British media have woken up to the reality that all this anti BP stuff is bad news for Britain.
Swimming against the tide of public opinion is impossible. It is an unpredictable tide at that, and seemingly sometimes it can take on a life of its own. The US president is nothing more than flotsam, powerless to influence, left with no choice but to go with the rest. So BP’s boss Tony Hayward is the most hated man in America. BP could just as easily stand for Beelzebub Poison, and the leader of the land of the free is left with no alternative but to vent the full force of his considerable oratorical skills in undermining British Petroleum in any way he can.
With England meeting the USA in the World Cup on Saturday, could this eventually unravel to undermine the special relationship? Perhaps not, but then listen to these words spoken by a US oil expert, and fan of harnessing the power of wind as our future source of energy. Matt Simmons, author of the book, ‘Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy’, has a simple solution for the BP fiasco. He wants the US government to kick BP out of the US, and turn the oil clean up over to the US navy.
It’s amazing how much faith the US has in its armed forces. The idea that the US Navy is somehow more competent than the company which possibly boasts more expertise in deep sea oil drilling than any other company in the world, does seem a tad naive.
Mr Simmons’s big idea is for one massive bomb, deep underground. As a result of the explosion, rock will melt and block the oil leak. Apparently the Soviets did something similar a few decades ago. Now, call us sceptical if you like, but does that particular policy response strike anyone as being on the risky side. By the way, Mr Simmons reckons BP will be filing for Chapter 11 within a month. See Fortune magazine, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy,
Meanwhile, BP has released its annual statistical review, a document which normally lists lots of headlines in its own right. And you couldn’t have made it up. Would you believe it, apparently more new oil production occurred in the US Gulf of Mexico than anywhere else in the world last year.
So, absorb this information. The country which is addicted to oil now wants to ban oil drilling in one of the most important regions in the world for oil exploitation, at a time when political instability across some of the globe’s key oil production regions is more unstable than ever. And at a time when demand for the black gold continues to escalate.
Yet, strangely, the BP report remains dismissive about peak oil, claiming that peak oil demand will come before we reach peak oil supply. Christof Ruehl, who is the chief economist at BP, reckons new sources of oil supply are always available.
Well, yes, they are, but they are in places that are increasingly hard to get at.
Still, looking at it from another point of view, maybe it is good to see the US putting the environment or social needs before oil. It makes a change. You may remember, in the days when Tony Hayward was little more than a bright graduate carving himself a career in the oil industry, the most hated man in America was, err …, now what was his name, oh yes, that’s right, Saddam Hussein. Remember him? Of course, the invasion of Iraq had nothing whatsoever to do with oil, it is just odd how oil always seems to figure in there somewhere.
Mind you, some of his views may seem a bit nutty, but Matt Simmons is right about wind. We need renewables, including wind and solar power, to emerge, and electric cars to evolve in tandem. And we need Craig Venter to hurry up with his synthetic algae that will apparently be able to produce oil for us to burn without poisoning the atmosphere, because it will soak up carbon dioxide as quickly as we can create it.
Maybe it is just us, but it seems these days in this post financial crisis era, the US is more keen to blame business than ever before. We are sure that it has nothing to do with the word British appearing in the name of the oil company that is currently being vilified, it is just inevitable that some will see it that way.
But then again, didn’t you think some of the anti Toyota stuff had a slight whiff of anti Japanese in it? We are not sure the US would have been quite so keen to ban Exxon Mobil, or to vilify GM.
If nothing else, we may be seeing the creeping menace of protectionism, by the back door.
Talking of protectionism, you should see the headline on CNNMoney that greeted news that Chinese exports have surged again: ‘Hello Chinese exports, good-bye U.S. jobs’. See today’s next piece,
At last, Chinese wages rise: is this the end of bubbles?
