BRITISH PETROLIUM AND USA GREED

British Petrolium, what is that? A relic from the British Colonialism raiding its pastures far away. Probably now not such a British company, but an international one. Probably one that our pension funds have invested their funds in without us knowing it. The ‘owners’ of companies today are faceless investors looking after their pension future with many faceless managers taking and managing risks. These are the totally ammoral owners of international companies, and we do not care what they do since our link to them is marginal and ‘hidden’ – but – we do like our pension funds to accumulate interests.

BP has been going through a disastrous crisis these months, and why? And who is blaming them? The US public and administration. The company was driven during the Nineties by a Lord Browne (CEO 1995-2007), a visionary entrepreneur who promoted innovation. In his time “the people with the best and boldest ideas were the ones who rose up the organization.” Lord Browne was an opera lover interested in climate change and renewable energy, even though he probably was none the better than most other managers at the time. I suspect his lobbying supported Tony Blair to participate in the invation into Irac mostly for economic pressures and fundamentally BP oil prospects.

Some interesting developments have happened since Lord Browne was replaced by a very different character Mr. Tony Hayward who very early said about his employers:

“Too many people working to save the world.”

He proposed to change the direction of the company to more aggressive professionalism while reaching out to new pastures or new oil fields. BP was in the forefront of oil exploration outside the East-Coast of US and actually Obama had changed the strategy of the country to open up previously closed areas for oil exploration. This he did only on March 31st this year. He did this to gain the confidence of voters for the elections this year and to follow the idea of previous president Nixon to increase the US reliance on home produced oil.

So, BP was acting according to the new US policy to seek more oil in its home terrain rather than in regions that have been difficult to control like Irac etc.

That Obama now sees BP as an irresponsible company pushing the limits of reach is hippocrisy, the work was within the US strategy, but now the US administration has to pretend it is angry and requires compensation etc for its fisher men and voters.

What I learn from this is that most organizations do not have ethical grounds when there is ambition for control of energy, military power or economics. None is to be trusted and the ambition to seek oil is damaging our existance. We should concentrate on the development of renewable energy: Energy that does not damage the environment and result in global environmental collapse.

July 4, 2010  Tags: ,   Posted in: PONDERINGS