Oil in the Gulf - 2

Another Fine Mess was a 1930 film by Laurel and Hardy. It also aptly describes the Gulf oil spill which has turned into a comedy of blame. Even President Obama played a starring role with his “ass-kicking” rhetoric suggesting that BP President Tony Hayward should be fired. Time magazine unveiled its “Dirty Dozen” culprits to blame for the oil spill. Not surprisingly the list included people from BP, Haliburton, Transocean, Minerals Management Service, along with Obama, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and the American Driver.

But perhaps we should all take a deep breath and suspend finger pointing for a moment so we might actually learn a few things. Clearly nobody on the planet was prepared for this spill – not BP, not the government, not Gulf shore communities. Why should they be prepared – nobody expected this. So it is not surprising that those trying to battle this disaster are struggling. No proven technology or strategy existed to deal with this situation. There are probably a number of people who anticipated the possibility, but how does a minority voice warning of calamity convince a large oil producing and consuming system to take heed? We have a huge oil-thirsty nation demanding cheap fuel, pushing global producers to find and process oil as quickly and inexpensively as they can, while at the same time providing shareholders with an acceptable return on their investment. None of this is bad. But that is who we are.

If you think a comprehensive spill response system should have been ready to go, who should have developed and paid for this multi-billion dollar contingency that nobody expected to need? BP? If so, then Chevron, Exxon-Mobile, and Shell should all have paid for duplicate systems. Do you really think that shareholders would have sacrificed their returns for a few quarters to develop a system that no one expected to need? Should an oil industry cooperative have been formed to do this? Should the Gulf coast states with the most at risk have been responsible? How about the federal government? The reality is that we don’t spend much time, energy, and money preparing for events we don’t think have a high likelihood of occurring. And yet, unlikely stuff happens.

There have been thoughtful discussions about risk that have led to decisions. Some believed that drilling close to the coastline was too risky and that we should drill way out on the “deepwater horizon.” Others who thought deepwater drilling was too risky were overruled. Some people believe that any offshore drilling is too risky so we should import our oil from the Middle East. Others believe that depending on foreign sources creates too many risks and that we need to tap our own sources. Some believe we should wean ourselves from oil dependence, others are not willing to give up our behemoth SUVs. All of these decisions create risks. And it is the “collective we” who make these decisions.

BP is accountable for this leak, but are they really the enemy as CNN contends? Aren’t they the ones we are relying on to stop this leak? And after all, who is BP? BP is not some obscure demon, but a few thousand regular people trying to produce oil products. And the shareholders are not simply rich capitalists living in opulence. Look inside your 401(k) or pension and see how many of you actually own shares of BP. If you think BP is the enemy I suggest you consider the quote from the cartoon strip Pogo, “We have seen the enemy and they is us.”