The answer to that question may depend upon which side of the Atlantic you call home. On the other side of the ocean, ink-stained fingers point to Transocean. On this side, to BP. Ironically, the two newspapers casting blame are owned by the same conglomerate: News Corp.
Over at The Sunday Times this weekend, the reporter fingers Transocean, claiming it caused the “spill” but is still rewarding stockholders. (This is not a spill.)
Transocean, the drilling company whose rig blew up, causing the oil spill, is to go ahead with a bumper dividend payout. It will give shareholders $1 billion (£687m) despite pressure from American legislators. (Source Requires Registration)
Right. The explosion at the surface of the ocean caused a massive leak a mile under the water. And as a result, BP stockholders and management are being victimized for Transocean’s misdeeds:
[BP] is vulnerable to takeover. Its shares have shed 40% of their value in the past two months, making BP worth £74 billion on Friday. [… BP] has been vilified in the [American] press and by Obama. The president has suggested that Tony Hayward, BP’s chief executive, should be sacked and that the company should halt its dividend until the clean-up is completed.
But BP is not a victim and does not have clean hands, according to a much longer analysis in the Wall Street Journal (27 May 2010, emphasis added):
It was a difficult drill from the start.
API Well No. 60-817-44169 threw up many challenges to its principal owner, BP PLC, swallowing expensive drilling fluid and burping out dangerous gas. Those woes put the Gulf of Mexico project over budget and behind schedule by April 20, the day the well erupted, destroying the Deepwater Horizon rig and killing 11 men.
Government investigators have yet to announce conclusions about what went wrong that day. The final step in the causation chain, industry engineers have said in interviews, was most likely the failure of a crucial seal at the top of the well or a cement plug at the bottom.
But neither scenario explains the whole story. A Wall Street Journal investigation provides the most complete account so far of the fateful decisions that preceded the blast. BP made choices over the course of the project that rendered this well more vulnerable to the blowout, which unleashed a spew of crude oil that engineers are struggling to stanch.
Even if you think you know what’s up with the BP mess, I urge you to read the WSJ analysis. I found it via my current issue of TheWeek, which I was belatedly reading today.
This doesn’t mean that I think Transocean bears no responsibility for the tragedy surrounding the explosion. But I don’t think anyone who has followed this story could possibly think that the platform, a mile above the well, was responsible for this environmental disaster.
Where the waters get cloudy regarding Transocean is in the complex network of governments and regulatory agencies involved in the oversight of these oil rigs. Ask a normal person if an oil rig located 40 miles off the coast of the U.S., and subject to U.S. sanctioned drilling rights, would be under U.S. regulatory authority and I bet ya 9 out of 10 would say “doh.”
But that’s not the case.
The Transocean deep-water oil rig is a poster child for the global economy and the belief that lawyers exist for the sole purpose of finding loopholes for their clients. From Monday’s Seattle Times:
The Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico was built in South Korea. It was operated by a Swiss company under contract to a British oil firm. Primary responsibility for safety and other inspections rested not with the U.S. government but with the Republic of the Marshall Islands — a tiny, impoverished nation in the Pacific Ocean. […] Since World War II, ships from the United States and other industrialized countries have been drawn to less-developed nations like the Marshall Islands, Panama and Liberia, havens known as “flags of convenience,” that allow shippers to evade military embargoes, taxes, seafarers unions and, some critics say, tighter safety regulations.
These massive structures are considered ships under international law.
Ships!
Can these platforms navigate under their own power from Port A to Port B? NO! They have to be towed. By a ship.
So, yeah, there could be culpability on the part of Transocean for the men who were killed and injured in the explosion.
But BP? The documentation floating into the light of day suggests culpability.
Culprit, not victim.
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com