Gulf Oil Spill: What a Mess

It’s been almost two months since one of the worst environmental disasters occurred in the gulf of mexico which claimed 11 lives and injured several others. Enough has been said and written about how it could have been averted and why BP failed to put safety measures in place. The fact remains that millions of gallons of oil has spewed into the gulf, top kill has been unsuccessful and little do we know when we will be able to recover from this catastrophe. The impact on environment and the wild life is beyond imagination, “small people” whose livelihoods depend on the fishing industry and tourism have suffered tremendously.

While the tragedy itself is far from over, every party involved is busy playing the blame games, saving their faces or trying to make the most out of the situation. BP is trying hard to protect its reputation by offering numerous apologies and taking the responsibility to compensate for the losses and recovery. Fitch is in the news for dragging BP down by six notches close to near junk status. BP, in turn is blaming Transocean, the owner and operator of the rig hired by BP to carry out the drilling work. Other oil giants like Shell, ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips are just too ecstatic that it wasn’t their rig that exploded. They are behaving like a bunch of school kids pointing fingers at BP, whereas their own safety measures aren’t exactly applaud-able. The stocks of BP have taken a dip, and the shareholders are sad to see their dividends go to the recovery fund. Many Indians, who are not a party involved at all, are disappointed over the enormous compensation of $20 billion dollars, because Union Carbide victims didn’t get paid as much. Grow up, will you?

On the other hand, some owners of the otherwise diminishing businesses in the gulf region are said to be making a fortune out of the compensation. Search engines like google, yahoo and bing have made their share of the profit by selling the keyword “oil spill” to BP. Some enthusiastic developers have even created an application for iPhone that could provide the location and pictures of the marine life affected. Nalco had its own two-minute crowning fame when it was revealed that their dispersants were being used in the recovery operations. Media, as usual is leaving no stone unturned to explode and scrutinize every bit of information related to the gulf tragedy. They have found a blazing subject to give them enough coverage for weeks, by converting a purely technical problem to a more political matter. Hayward is under the fire from Obama, who in turn is terrified that this could cost him the next elections. The president is looking for a rear to kick while the oil companies are busy trying to save theirs. Meanwhile, the rest of us are content watching Messi do the honors on the field.