With A Vengeance

You don't mess with the United States of America. Especially with a government on the ropes, as the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama currently is. Facing condemnation from the American people as being insufficiently alert and reactive to a vast environmental dilemma stemming in part from their own casual attitude toward the potential of disaster resulting from drilling for oil at a huge oceanic depth without requiring assurances of safety procedures in place prior to the fact.

An administration in such dire straits takes remedial action. Which is to take charge, advise its constituents that everything possible is being done to ameliorate an impossible situation, and that the pain they are suffering is felt by their government. A government which insists all the responsibility is to be laid at the feet of the pan-global corporation that did the behest of the government in exploratory drilling to ensure that America, as much as possible, becomes 'energy independent'.

British Petroleum Corporation is certainly suffering. In its own corporate, global-image, revenue-extracting way as much as the coastal residents of the U.S. where the gigantic oil spill is ravaging their livelihoods and the beauty of their surroundings, let alone the natural resources and the fish and fowl to which it is home. The corporation's stock shares are plummeting as confidence is quickly eroding in its ability to surmount the crisis it blundered into.

President Obama is demanding that BP hold off paying its stockholders, until it has fully discharged its fundamental monetary obligations to making good its promises on clean-up and remittances, an unheard-of intervention of a public office holder into a private industry's affairs. Unheard of in America, not so much so in autocratic or totalitarian states like Russia or Venezuela, perhaps.

BP's cleanup costs are enormous, its pledge to pay costs associated with loss of livelihood of U.S. coastal fishermen will further dredge its resources. There are rumours, that seem well founded enough given the circumstances, that it will not be able to avoid bankruptcy, as fanciful as that may seem for an aged, respected, successful, enormously wealthy corporation such as British Petroleum.

But the White House administration is livid with rage; little of it self-directed, for mea culpas do not go over too well with an electorate.

The moratorium on further well drilling is another set-back for U.S. administration plans and oil producers as well, resulting in a massive loss for oil industry workers as well. Which the White House insists in an incredible display of aggression, that BP must pay for, holding it completely liable for all costs associated with the misadventure.

President Obama has promised Americans that this disaster will cost them not one red penny.

The relative success of the company capturing almost 15,000 barrels of oil daily through the partial success of the last-ditch "top hat" containment system doesn't hold a patch on the outrage of the company-denied, scientist-confirmed huge plumes of raw oil contaminating the ocean, at a mile-depth and width the size of an American state, with its effects on shore birds and sea life alike.

And now, America has Great Britain's concern over the potential loss of one of its largest corporations' longevity to deal with. State-to-state conversations of mutual concern and un-mutual perceptions and sensibilities will most certainly make for some delicate diplomatic manoeuvres.