BP Oil Disaster: The View From Britain

From my Article in InsiderIowa.com

By Steffen Schmidt

On my recent trip to Great Britain I was taken aback by the utterly different news coverage of the BP oil disaster in the British media from how U.S. news sources treated the story.

First of all, the disaster played at a much lower level of intensity and I had to literally search through the newspapers to find articles. Britain was preoccupied with other serious issues which I will discuss in subsequent columns and which you will find interesting because they are topics of great urgency for Americans as well such as economic troubles and Afghanistan.

Second, there was lots of philosophizing about the "blame culture" in the USA where "everything becomes a lawsuit" and "where there are no accidents only willful malice." In fact, there were parallel stories about an increase in lawsuits in Britain for things that in the past had always been seen and treated as accidents and not as reasons to sue someone for causing them.

Third, a recurring theme of discussion in London was the importance of BP to British pensioners (that's retired folks for those of you who don't do "Brit-speak"). One of every seven pounds of pensioners’ income comes from BP dividends and earnings. This was of great concern all around as retirement and living a decent and actually, a VERY comfortable life after work is a huge value of life in Britain.

Fourth, taxes on BP profits accounts for close to a six billion pound source of tax revenue for an already strapped government budget.

Fifth, over ten thousand British jobs depend on BP directly and many tens of thousand additional jobs indirectly.

Sixth, although there was sympathy for the creatures such as oil coated and stunned looking brown Pelicans and oily fish and some stunning and disturbing pictures were run in the media, there was quite definitely more focus on the economic impact of the disaster.

Seventh, the latest round of articles and commentary in London at least emphasized the enormous importance of BP to the economy of the United States and especially to the Gulf states and in particular Texas and Louisiana.

The Guardian ran an article with impressive graphics and the headline "Anger as Obama freeze on deepwater drilling ordered by the Obama administration puts 46,000 oil jobs at risk." The piece went on to quote folks such as oilrig workers and Gov. Jindal of Louisiana who lamented the moratorium on deepwater drilling. There was also commentary that the rigs would likely be moved from the Gulf of Mexico to offshore Africa, Brazil, and India where wells are waiting to be drilled. The press in London quoted the widow of one of the rig workers killed in the explosion that still supports offshore deep water drilling.

Another theme that emerged in the media was the shortfall in oil production that would result from the moratorium with the number of 350,000 barrels a day less by 2016 mentioned as a possibility. Sidebar stories analyzed the global demand for oil and emphasized that China had now passed the UK in energy consumption per capita. The idea of this package of articles was that by stopping oil drilling Pres. Obama was putting at risk the energy security of the U.S. and setting up a potential for sharp rises in oil prices worldwide.

It was very interesting to see the BP disaster discussed away from the glare of CNN and the American media frenzy. At one pub in Wales I discussed this issue with a guy who had lived in the U.S. for many years, served in the British military during the Gulf wars, and who was an avid hunter and nature lover. His comment was that the long-term dangerous impact of this spill was being vastly overplayed. He noted that he had seen the terrible oil spills during the first Gulf war first hand and that the long-term consequences of these were temporary and most of life was back to normal. "Nature is very powerful and we always underestimate her resilience," he insisted.

In any case, the BP oil disaster is much more than environmental issues – it actually appears to be resetting US-British relations and not in a good way. My next column will be on "Obama in the UK: Things Are Not Going Well."