By Andrew Montero
Shares of the former British Petroleum, now known only by its initials (NYSE: BP) continued to struggle this week as the U.S. government further enflamed an already tense situation. Certainly the continuing flow of oil in the Gulf is a major problem. The death of many forms of marine life and plant life due to poisoning and suffocation from the oil is a horrible situation as well. Everyone already knows the tragic situation unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, not to mention the loss of 11 workers who died trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. The government, however, has gone out of its way to throw gas on a already burning hot fire. Among the culprits, one Ken Salazar, who audaciously made the assertion that BP should have to pay for all oil workers jobs in the Gulf that are lost due to the disaster and the coming moronic halt of drilling in the Gulf by the U.S. government, which can only be described as the ultimate in micro-mismanagement and nearsightedness. This is a typical government responses, a knee jerk reaction to a serious problem, but one that makes little sense once you look at the situation.
Obviously BP needs to not only stop the oil from spilling into the Gulf, but they also need to compensate people whose incomes have been affected or destroyed by the situation and show some remorse, not make commercials to try and sway opinion. The PR firm hired by BP has only caused further harm to their reputation. Will companies never learn. You can’t appear like you are trying to be concerned, you simply just really have to be concerned, and your actions speak for themselves in these situations. Of course, our own US government and the President himself have been just as out of touch with reality on the ground in Louisiana. Micro-management does not, has not, and will not work.
Why has the President not met with BP CEO Tony Heyward, nor spoken to him? Why is Halliburton, which performed the cementing work on the well hours before the explosion, and other companies involved with the situation being avoided in discussions regarding compensation to fishermen and repair of the damage to the environment? Why is the US government attempting to decide whether a non U.S. company pays its shareholders a dividend? These are just a few of the questions that need to be
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and not reality. When does it stop? There needs to be an investigation and resulting punishment that is appropriate for the harm being done to multiple economies all in the name of deriving profits off largely overblown risk to current events.
