Plan B Forum

BP 'small people' comment causes anger along Gulf

By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jun 16, 6:09 pm ET

VENICE, La. – The "small people" of the Gulf Coast have a humongous message for oil giant BP: They're tired of the company's big-time executives making insensitive comments.

On Wednesday, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people."

Orange Beach, Ala., Mayor Tony Kennon laughed when he heard Svanberg's remark.

"They can call me small, miniature, they can call me anything they want. Just write the check and send it to us," he said.

But Justin Taffinder of New Orleans was not amused.

"We're not small people. We're human beings. They're no greater than us. We don't bow down to them. We don't pray to them," Taffinder said.

Lord Jim wrote:

BP 'small people' comment causes anger along Gulf

By HOLBROOK MOHR, Associated Press Writer Holbrook Mohr, Associated Press Writer – Wed Jun 16, 6:09 pm ET

VENICE, La. – The "small people" of the Gulf Coast have a humongous message for oil giant BP: They're tired of the company's big-time executives making insensitive comments.

On Wednesday, BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg told reporters in Washington: "I hear comments sometimes that large oil companies are greedy companies or don't care, but that is not the case with BP. We care about the small people."

Mr. Svanberg is apparently envious of his colleague BP CEO Anthony Hayward's status as Most Hated Man in America and is anxious to displace him...

BP processes about 1.5 million barrels of crude oil per day, across six refineries in the United States. In total, 150 refineries in the United States process just under 18 million barrels per day, so BP processes about 8.5 percent of it. However, as reported by the Center for Public Integrity, 97 percent of the most dangerous violations found by OSHA were on BP properties.

There are several levels of citations. The most dangerous are egregious willful and willful, in that order. Egregious citations are flagrant violations and willful citations are intentional disregard for employee safety and health.

Between June 2007 and February 2010, there were 761 egregious citations issued in total. All but one of them were issued to BP. In the same time period, 69 of the 91 willful citations also belonged to BP.

Tony Hayward is being relieved.

While Barack Obama is lambasting BP for spreading muck in the Gulf of Mexico, he should perhaps pencil in a date with the people of Bhopal when he visits India later this year. While 11 men lost their lives on BP's watch and the shrimps get coated with black stuff, the chemicals that killed thousands of people in Bhopal in 1984 are still leaching into the ground water a quarter of a century after a poisonous, milky-white cloud settled over the city.

The compensation – some $470m – paid out by Union Carbide, the US owner of the plant and now part of Dow Chemical, was just the cash it received from its insurers to compensate the victims, a process that took 17 years. But it's one rule for them and another for anybody else.

Obama wants "British Petroleum" to pay back every nickel and dime the Deepwater Horizon disaster costs. To make sure BP gets the message, the president says he back Congress plans to retrospectively raise the liability limit for claims from $75m to $10bn. That's real money.

While foreign companies in the US are shown the big stick, Washington offers a big shield for its multinationals abroad. In the case of Bhopal, it was the US that blocked India's requests to extradite Warren Anderson, the former chairman of Union Carbide who accepted "moral responsibility" for the accident until a short spell in an Indian jail changed his mind. This week saw just the prosecution of local Indian managers – 26 years after the event.

That was then. Surely India, which says it is an emerging power that wants to shape the world, would be able to stand up to the United States today? And wouldn't a more moral president see that foreign lives are as precious as American ones? Apparently not.

India's still playing a craven toady to a US that is ruthlessly pursuing an agenda where commercial interests are put above the lives of others. Delhi has stripped a flagship nuclear bill of a clause that allowed companies to be sued for negligence in the event of a – God forbid – accident.

It is bizarre to see a leader of the developing world offer up its citizens' lives cheaply to secure investment from foreign companies and governments. Under the civil liabilities for nuclear damage bill, central to a deal with the controversial nuclear pact with the US, costs for cleaning up a catastrophic failure would end up being paid by the Indian taxpayer.

Sure, India is desperate for the nuclear deal – which will see it become the only nonpermanent member of the UN security council to keep its atomic weapons and trade in nuclear know-how. But at what price? Today we know.

Washington made it clear it wanted India to set the bar low on liability – so that shareholders of large US corporations would not be forced to pay out for sloppy, deadly mistakes. So any future victims in India would be left at the mercy of the country's justice system, like those poor souls who lost lives, loved ones and their health and were condemned to spending years lost in the courts with little to show but false hope.

Delhi had argued that international suppliers would not be willing to enter the Indian nuclear market without such a bill. But has Russia been willing to do so. And Germany accepts no cap on nuclear liability. In the US the nuclear lobby accepts a liability set at $10bn.

In Bhopal, what happened in the years after was a bigger scandal than the original accident. Although Delhi was cackhanded, the US bears most of the blame. Unlike BP, Washington did not threaten US companies for deaths in the past and is actively working to ensure they evade responsibility in the future. Obama's administration has not learned the lessons of history. It means we are doomed to repeat its mistakes.