Deepwater Horizon: Imperialism cannot stop polluting the world
Scale of the catastrophe
On 20 April BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, based
in the Gulf of Mexico, exploded, killing eleven personnel and unleashing vast
quantities of oil into the Atlantic. BP’s own fictitious estimates of the
quantities involved suggested a relatively minor leak, amounting to some 42,000
gallons a day; by early May even BP’s own officials were forced to concede that
in fact as many as 2.5 million gallons could be released each day, whilst
industry specialists characterised the catastrophe as not so much a simple leak
as a volcanic event. (See Tom Eley, ‘Obama Sheltered BP’s Deepwater Horizon Rig
from Regulatory Requirement’, 6 May, www.globalresearch.
ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19027).
Nobody has yet been able to set a credible limit
upon the scale of this catastrophe, given that every effort to staunch the
flood of oil has met with failure and that the ultimate direction of the vast
toxic plume depends on weather conditions and oceanic currents over which
nobody has any control. One moment Florida is put on alert for the spill to
make landfall, the next it is Cuba that is preparing for the worst.
Unlike earlier disasters like the Exxon Valdez,
where the spill happened within an enclosed stretch of water close to a
well-defined shoreline, the Deepwater Horizon spill occurred far out in the
Atlantic and initially (by 12 May) contaminated the system of tiny islands and
marshland ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico, only subsequently (by 23 May)
spreading 65 miles up the Louisiana coast. Rather than a shocking but singular
contamination event, what has been set in motion is effectively a war of
attrition with no end in sight: whilst a 3 June report from the National Centre
for Atmospheric Research warns of thousands of miles of Atlantic coastline
contaminated even before the summer is out, some scientists suggest there will
be a series of “rolling skirmishes” going on for months or years, long
after the flow of oil is blocked. (Encyclopaedia of Earth, ‘The Deepwater
Horizon Oil Spill’, http://www.eoearth.org/).
In addition to the massive threat posed to marine
life, livelihoods from fishing, catering and tourism are being wiped out. Some
have even suggested that the geological forces unleashed by the botched
drilling could have a radical effect on the direction and temperature of
oceanic currents, resulting in a dramatic cooling of the European landmass.
Who is to blame?
Imperialism is to blame for this disaster. We have
this on the authority of no less than the President of the United States of America, who has increasingly been obliged to dish the dirt on BP’s
criminal disregard for safety regulations, public welfare and the natural
environment. The leader of the world’s most wealthy and most dangerous
imperialist power was forced into this attack upon an outstanding flagship of
monopoly capitalism as the only way in which he could dodge the charge that he
was facing “his own Katrina”, like Bush before him. To have persisted
with his administration’s initial strategy of collusion and cover-up would have
risked losing whatever credibility he still retains as a “champion of the
underdog”. Instead, he belatedly changed tack and unleashed a war of words
against BP, emphasising the multinational’s British origins. Naturally this
attempt to save Obama’s own populist skin and to take the heat off the
capitalist system in general – instead reserving blame for British imperialism
in particular – then cracked open a rich seam of defensive chauvinist bile on
this side of the Atlantic, fulminating against Obama’s supposed hostility to
Britain. As the overproduction crisis worsens, the fault lines begin opening
up between even the closest imperialist allies.
Yet the irony is that the Obama
administration initially did all it could to protect BP, obscuring the scale
and character of the catastrophe and colluding with BP’s own cover-up.
And even now, despite the sound and fury emanating
from both the Oval Office and the congressional hearings, affairs are still
being conducted on a “gentleman’s agreement” basis, with BP agreeing to stump
up $20bn worth of compensation – a small fraction of BP’s total wealth and
little more than a token gesture given estimates in excess of a trillion dollars
for the eventual probable scale of the damage – and with still no sign of
criminal proceedings against this serial polluter.
Cover up
Sources in the US Army Corps of Engineers and the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) told journalists soon after the
explosion that Obama and BP were working together to hide the scale of the
disaster and limit BP’s liability for the resulting damage. Once the size of
the catastrophe meant it could no longer be ignored, Homeland Security stepped
in, conveying the impression that the situation was at last being taken
seriously but also conveniently putting a “national security” block on
media coverage. When the Army Corps of Engineers requested access to satellite
photos of the oil slick, NASA turned it down. It was only when National
Geographic somehow got hold of some pictures and posted them on their website
that at least a fraction of the necessary data was revealed. (See Wayne Madsen,
‘The Cover-up: BP’s Crude Politics and the Looming Environmental Mega-Disaster’,
9 May, www.globalresearch.ca/Print Article .php?articleId=19068). The Coast
Guard service was reportedly denying the press access to areas affected by
contamination, in accordance with orders from BP itself, and fishermen and
contractors hired to clean up the spill were under pressure not to talk to
journalists (Brian Merchant, 25 May, ‘Masking the Extent of the Disaster: The
Worst of the Gulf Oil Spill has not been Revealed’,
www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19325).
However vigorously Obama now beats the drum against
BP in public, his administration remains wary of doing the most obvious thing:
prosecuting BP for criminal negligence. No matter that BP already pleaded
guilty to a felony after its Texas City refinery blew up in 2005 killing 15
workers and injuring another 170, and did so again after the two massive
Alaskan oil leaks in 2006 resulting from BP’s failure to spot and rectify
corroded pipe work. To launch a full-scale criminal justice assault on a key
monopoly capitalist player over such a high-stakes environmental disaster as
Deepwater, whilst promising immediate populist returns, could run the risk of
putting in the dock the criminally exploitative nature of all imperialism, not
of the British variety alone. So it is that, at time of writing, despite an
ever accumulating weight of evidence of BP’s reckless disregard for safety,
there has yet to be a criminal prosecution for the Deepwater Horizon case.
And even if the heat on Obama reaches the point
where such a prosecution becomes unavoidable, there has been so much time
already for tampering with crime-scene evidence and leaning on witnesses that
hopes of a just outcome would be thin indeed. BP’s history of intimidating
hostile witnesses and whistle-blowers, is well documented:
“In one case, BP’s CEO of Alaskan
operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower,
Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe’s tanker facility. BP
tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear
campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP’s acts were
‘reminiscent of Nazi Germany’. This was not an isolated case. Captain James
Woodle, once in charge of the pipe’s Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into
resigning the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The
weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity” (29
May, Greg Palast, ‘Smart Pig: BP’s Other Spill this Week’, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19410).
Another consideration staying Washington’s hand
might also be that BP happens to supply the US military with 80% of its fuel
requirement, so closely bound together are US and British arms and oil
interests (see Jason Leopold, 29 May, ‘Why Isn’t BP Under Criminal
Investigation?’, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19415).
Indeed, any prosecution of “British” BP for its criminal behaviour could hardly
fail to implicate a very American company, Halliburton, as a criminal
accomplice. It turns out that the same company which has feasted on the
contracts corruptly awarded it for services to imperialism in occupied Iraq has also been making a killing supplying the cementation process required by deep sea
drilling technology.
“[W]herever there’s a national tragedy involving
oil, Cheney’s offshore company Halliburton is never far afield. In fact, stay
tuned; Halliburton may emerge as the primary villain in this caper. The blow
out occurred shortly after Halliburton completed an operation to reinforce
drilling hole casing with concrete slurry. This is a sensitive process that,
according to government experts, can trigger catastrophic blowouts if not
performed attentively. According to the Minerals Management Service, 18 of 39
blowouts in the Gulf of Mexico since 1996 were attributed to poor workmanship
injecting cement around the metal pipe. Halliburton is currently under
investigation by the Australian government for a massive blowout in the Timor
Sea in 2005 caused by its faulty application of concrete casing” (see
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 5 May, ‘Sex, Lies and Oil Spills’, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19083).
In point of fact, Halliburton finished off its
concreting job on Deepwater just twenty hours before the fatal blow-out.
Another powerful reason for Obama to want the whole
mess brushed under the carpet was that it threatens to disabuse the US public of the idea that his “green” presidency signals a crucial break with the oil-fixated,
neo-con legacy of the Bush/Cheney years. Following adverse public reaction to
oil spills off the coast of California and elsewhere, Congress in 1980 banned
off shore drilling around 85% of the US coastline. Despite huge pressure from
the oil monopolies, this ban clung on all the way through the neo-con years,
until 31 March this year, when Obama lifted it – just three weeks before the Gulf of Mexico disaster. He dressed up this move as an “expansion of
offshore oil and gas exploration” that would “balance
the need to harness domestic energy resources and the need to protect America’s
natural resources”, promising that “we’ll employ
new technologies that reduce the impact of oil exploration and protect
areas that are vital to tourism, the environment, and our national security” (Michael
Collins, 25 May, ‘Big Oil, Big Money and Offshore Drilling’, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArticle.php?articleId=19317).
Although the Gulf coastline had in fact already
been exempted from the 85% ban, the timing of events could hardly have been
worse for Obama’s green image. BP’s license to drill in the Gulf, granted under
the previous administration, had come with a special dispensation, relieving
the oil giant of the inconvenience of having to provide a full environmental
impact statement. Clearly not wishing to break with tradition, even in the
month after the disaster the present administration handed out at least
27 further such light-regulation leases for deepwater drilling (Michael
Collins, ibid).
Overproduction Crisis
So why is it that US imperialism, having staked so
much on the endeavour to restore America’s flagging power and influence in the
world behind the protective smokescreen of Obama’s “progressive” credentials,
seems now prepared to wreck the whole populist scam by giving carte blanche to
big oil to trash everything that stands in its path?
Green reformism thinks it has the answer: oil is
running out, so America will go to any lengths to supply its needs. The
drawback to this argument is that, if nothing else, the Gulf disaster
demonstrates just how vast the remaining fossil fuel potential on the
planet really is. Given the development of new extraction and consumption
technologies and their deployment in a rational manner – i.e. under the control
of planned socialist economies serving social need not private profit – there
is every reason to be confident that the careful use of fossil fuels, as part
of an energy mix including nuclear and renewables, could prove feasible for a
much longer span than the “peak oil” Cassandras maintain. The problem is
not that we have reached a “tipping point” and oil is just about to dry up; the
problem is that the extraction and consumption of oil is controlled by
imperialism, which subordinates every other consideration – including the
future of human life on this planet – to its right to dominate all markets,
shaft all competitors and extract the maximum profits.
Failure to grasp this may account for the muted
response the disaster has received from Greenpeace and others. One
disconcerted supporter popped up on the Greenpeace UK website on 11 June to
say, “I can’t understand why Greenpeace isn’t using its Research Team to
provide solid data on what is happening as a result of the spill. This is the
worst man-made environmental disaster – possibly ever – but it’s slipping from
the newspapers and the televised news bulletins. There is an amazing lack of
information on its impact on people, livelihoods, fish, wildlife, habitats, on
the poisonous substances used for dispersal, on the impact at surface and deep
levels of the ocean. Where is Greenpeace?” On both its UK and its international websites Greenpeace continued to lead with its campaign to save
the Blue fin Tuna – laudable no doubt, but an odd priority to pick at that
moment.
For those in the oil business who have a vested
interest in preserving the appearance of oil-scarcity – helping thereby to
raise prices higher than is warranted by actual market conditions – “peak
oil” theory has proved rather convenient. The notion that the most
immediate problem facing us is over-consumption of a diminishing resource,
rather than the global production of more of this resource than can all be sold
at a profit, neatly distracts attention from the most fundamental problem of
all, the overproduction crisis of the capitalist system. Anglo-American
imperialism is driven to conquer new oil fields in ever more inaccessible
places (off shore, Arctic) and in ever less welcoming locations (Nigeria, Colombia), not fundamentally because it faces a shortage of supply, but because it
must strive to dominate the world market against all rivals and maximise its
profits. And the chief obstacle to those profits being maximised is the
accelerating impoverishment of those very masses upon whose purchasing capacity
capital relies for its own expansion.
Cut throat competition
In the battle to dominate the world market, all
pious talk about international cooperation among the community of nations goes
out of the window. Foreign Policy magazine reported that whilst thirteen
countries had offered assistance to the US within the first two weeks of the
disaster, not one offer had yet been accepted by Washington. (Cited by Dian
Chu, ‘Why Did The U.S. Refuse International Help on The Gulf Oil Spill?’, www.globalresearch.ca/PrintArt-icle.php?articleId=19655)
It is obvious that the US, with its massive home
territory, should have excelled in onshore drilling techniques, whilst the
Europeans have had to master special techniques required for drilling under the
sea. Common sense then would suggest that when a Belgian company claimed that
it had the technological expertise to deal with the Gulf spill in three to four
months, rather than the estimated nine months planned by the US on their own, Washington would jump at the opportunity. Belgium and Holland lead the world in
this kind of technical fix; between them they run the world’s only half-dozen
ships that are equipped to the necessary level. Yet the US prefers to stick to its own, lower tech solutions, keeping jealously to a protectionist script
written back in 1920 with the Jones Act. This Act requires that all goods
transported by sea between US ports must sail in US-flagged ships built in the
States, owned and crewed by Americans (Dian Chu, ibid). Even at the
cost of seeing its own coastline trashed, US imperialism cannot risk conceding
an inch to its competitors, such is the irrational logic of monopoly
capitalism. So it is that commodity production relations will increasingly act
as a fetter on the development of the productive forces, until such time as
proletarian revolution ends the contradiction between the social character of
labour and the private character of appropriation.
The real solution: socialism
The response of socialist Cuba to the threat posed by the oil spill provides a sane and sober contrast to Washington’s
schizophrenic mix of collusion, denunciation and less-than-splendid isolation.
General Ramon Espinosa, vice-president of the armed forces, stated that it
would be a disaster for his country if the spill hit its shores, but “we are
documenting and studying. We are preparing with everything in our power”.
Frankly acknowledging that “we have had small spills involving tankers on
our coasts, but we’ve never had to confront anything of this magnitude”, Cuba has turned to its fraternal neighbour Venezuela, bringing in experts from that country to
advise on damage limitation. Meanwhile Ramon Pardo, head of Cuban civil
defence, said that Havana was doing all it could to prepare defences and raise
the vigilance of those who live along stretches of the coastline that could be
affected. (Guardian, 16 May).
Cuba, under permanent economic embargo from US imperialism, has had to make its own choices about energy under exceptionally difficult
circumstances, especially since the loss of the Soviet Union deprived her of a
ready supply of oil. What has served her in good stead during this special
period has been the socialist character of her society and leadership.
Socialist planning has made it possible to diversify the economy and reduce the
degree of dependence upon oil imports; socialist cooperation with Venezuela has eased Cuba’s oil shortage whilst assisting Venezuela’s own development needs. Cuba is only one tiny country, living under siege from the mightiest imperialist nation on
earth, yet it is able to stand up and show what can be done when social
priorities are determined, not by what serves the exploiters, but by what
serves the people. Where countries like Cuba, the DPRK, Vietnam and China lead today, the rest of modern humanity can and must follow tomorrow, if we have
but the courage to forge our own future.