The Deepwater Horizon oil disaster has revealed to millions of working people in the U.S. that British Petroleum is a criminal organization that cannot be trusted, and must be held accountable for its actions.
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The spill itself occurred because BP, attempting to protect every possible penny of profits for its shareholders and CEOs, circumvented many safety requirements. They spent millions in lobbying money to curry favor with their millionaire representatives in Congress to allow high-risk offshore drilling and remove even more safety measures. They willfully neglected to address safety warnings from experts that cost the lives of 11 oil rig workers, and now untold destruction to the ecosystem of the entire ocean, and beyond. The period before the disaster was one of not only criminal negligence, but shady backroom deals, false reports and a conscious attempt to ignore laws put in place to protect people and the planet.
Once the disaster took place, BP immediately did what any criminal would do. They began to lie, and they began to cover-up.
They first dealt with the witnesses; the workers who were rescued from the rig explosion after watching 11 of their friends perish in the disaster, were quickly locked away and intimidated into signing contracts promising to not sue BP.
BP then tried to spin the gravity of the disaster, so they would be less likely held accountable for their crimes by an outraged public. In the beginning, BP (and their partners in the Coast Guard) insisted that the size of the spill was only 1,000 barrels a day. But while BP representatives were reading in front of cameras the estimates of 1,000 barrels per day, they were privately reading internal memos that estimated 100,000 barrels per day were spewing into the ocean, 100 times what they claimed publicly.
Getting rid of the evidence
They also began to destroy the evidence. Tons of chemical dispersants, estimated by scientists to be far more toxic than oil, have been dropped over the ocean to simply push the oil under the surface, hiding it from view. The Environmental Protection Agency ordered BP to stop using the dispersants, but BP refused. They also began setting the oil ablaze, burning alive scores of endangered sea turtles and other wildlife.
As for photographic evidence: BP hired armed mercenaries to guard the beaches to prevent local residents from seeing or documenting the damage. The U.S. Coast Guard joined the cover-up effort, announcing that journalists would be fined $40,000 for trying to take photos of the beaches. While top scientists revealed giant underwater oil plumes, BP executives stated on national television that there “simply wasn’t any evidence,” when there was nothing but evidence to the contrary.
And when it comes to the most pressing and immediate effects of the disaster, the tens of thousands of working people on the Gulf Coast who are now relying on food banks and churches for food because of BP’s crimes, the response was to hire a firm that specializes in denying compensation claims. Their multi-million-dollar army of lawyers and claims processors will ensure that every possible person is denied any cent of BP’s profits.
Even as BP is spending millions on a public relations campaign, buying TV commercials and full-page newspaper ads, still trying to present themselves as a “green” company that is going to “make it right,” they are continuing high-risk drilling that could cause another disaster in a pristine habitat, and devastate even more coastal workers.
Only two weeks after the Obama administration announced a moratorium on offshore drilling, BP announced the continuation of the project known as “Liberty.” With full government support, BP is currently drilling three miles off the coast of Alaska. Federal scientists are calling the approval of the offshore drilling “bizarre,” because it is so risky, and BP conducted the environmental review for the approval of the project itself, instead of the standard practice of federal scientists evaluating the risk. The type of well being built has never been done before, and the risks “have not been studied.” While oil continues to gush into the Gulf, another disaster may be in the making in Arctic waters.
Seize BP campaign takes on oil giant and more
The Seize BP campaign has taken on the oil giant with the only just demand—to seize the assets of the company and place them in a trust to be administered by fisherman, shrimpers, scientists, and community leaders, to provide immediate relief for the people of the Gulf.
But BP is not alone; they are just one entity in a gang of corporate criminals who stand upon devastated communities with pockets filled with oil money. While the Seize BP campaign has taken on BP specifically, in an attempt to win the justice that the people of the Gulf deserve, we recognize the larger fight against the myriad of oil conglomerates, all of whom have a long history of destroying the environment and the lives of the people who live in it.
In the Niger Delta, the vast majority of the population live in squalor, while beneath their feet lie billions of dollars in oil. The oil they live atop constitutes around 80 percent of the revenue of the entire country, yet the people there have the lowest life expectancy in Nigeria.
And what the residents of the Gulf Coast have been enduring for the past three months, the people in the Niger Delta have been dealing with for five decades. Disaster after disaster has poured 546 million gallons of oil into the delta—an Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years. Here, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell pipes often burst from corrosion and neglect, filling the mangrove habitats and fishing areas with oil. Regarding the BP spill, a resident of the Niger Delta told the New York Times, “We’re sorry for them, but it’s what’s been happening to us for 50 years.” Another said, “Whatever cry we cry is not heard outside of here.”
Last month, local women demonstrated outside an Exxon Mobil site that had been spewing oil for weeks. Nigerian soldiers, ultimately under the command of Exxon, attacked and beat the women demonstrating. Just as BP has shown itself to be the Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Coast Guard, oil giants command armies around the world, who defend their profits from the residents they steal them from.
In 1984, a plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India owned by Union Carbide, now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company, leaked toxic gases into surrounding neighborhoods—neighborhoods that of course, shared none of the super-profits from the plant. The gas leak is considered the worst environmental disaster in world history. Over 3,500 residents died immediately, and 15,000 have died over the years as a direct result of the leak. Either dying or living with debilitating effects of being poisoned are another 600,000.
Like with the BP spill, the corporate criminals responsible have fought tooth-and-nail to deny compensation to the families of the dead, and the three generations of residents struggling to survive.
Twenty-six years after the disaster, the battle to win compensation finally ended, with a deal very pleasing to Dow executives. A mere $280 million, from a company that made over $44 billion in revenue in 2009, to be divided among hundreds of thousands of victims who have been waiting more than two decades for justice. “We are not satisfied with the compensation, we are not satisfied with the rehabilitation and we are not satisfied about the approach to corporate liability,” said one of the victims.
The list goes on. The status quo in today’s world is one where corporate giants are free to steal and plunder natural resources, driving the people around them into poverty—to destroy ecosystems and pollute unabated—to obliterate the jobs and livelihoods with repeated disasters caused by neglect and cost-cutting—to cause the deaths of tens of thousands—and never be held remotely accountable for the suffering they cause. All to ensure climbing dividends for a tiny group of wealthy investors, and fat bonus checks for their corporate boards and top executives. The governments of the affected people—from the U.S. to Nigeria, to India, and beyond—are completely subservient to their corporate masters, offering their military and courts to defend their profits.
The Seize BP campaign seeks to change this equation. The focus on BP and the Gulf disaster does not just seek to win relief for the Gulf Coast, but to build a movement that changes the way big oil, and other corporate giants, are able to act with impunity and make billions for themselves at the expense of millions of people around the world, and the planet we live on.
Setting a precedent
If the Seize BP campaign were to succeed in the seizure of BP’s assets, it would set a precedent that would impact every single case where corporate giants cause such devastation. No longer will multi-millionaires in expensive suits be able to trounce all over the lives of working people, leaving shattered lives in their wake, safeguarded by the entire political and legal establishments.
Putting people over profits, and the planet over profits, is a change that must happen, or the destructive path capitalism is on will only accelerate, with more and more disasters, more and more ruined lives, and environmental degradation that threatens all life on Earth.
People all over the country have joined the Seize BP campaign and stood up to fight; and we must continue to fight—the oil spilling into the Gulf is the same oil spilling into the Niger Delta. The fight against BP is the fight against Shell, Exxon Mobil, Dow Chemical, and every corporation guilty of criminal negligence that have never been held accountable.
