A Sea in Flames - Carl Safina [85]
Nigerians can scarcely believe the efforts to stop the Gulf oil leak and to protect the Gulf shoreline. When major oil spills happen in the Niger Delta, Nigerian writer Ben Ikari observes, “The oil companies just ignore it.” The Nigerian government says there were more than 7,000 spills between 1970 and 2000. Nearly one-tenth of the oil America imports comes from Nigeria.
Shell says that 98 percent of all its oil spills in Nigeria are caused by vandalism, theft, or sabotage. Local communities and environmental groups insist that the problem is rusting facilities and apathy. Similar stories come from the Amazon, Ecuador, and elsewhere. Nigerian environmentalist Nnimo Bassey says, “In Nigeria, they have been living above the law. They are now clearly a danger to the planet.”
By the start of the third week of June, one-third of the Gulf’s federal waters, 81,000 square miles, remain closed to fishing.
And the Economist estimates that BP is on the hook for eventual cleanup costs and damages of $20 billion, plus fines up to $17 billion. But BP’s market-value plummet is two to three times as great. BP stock has melted off nearly $90 billion worth of value. Investors fear that compensation claims are spiraling out of control. I think they’re overreacting. BP, I am willing to say, will probably be fine.
Big Oil has long enjoyed the milk and honey of tax-fed privileges ranging from massive subsidies to supreme dispensation. Exxon led the small communities of Prince William Sound in a grimly choreographed death dance that ended in 2008. When a huge penalty was levied against Exxon, the oil giant got the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its case nearly two decades after Valdez ran aground. Chief Justice John Roberts began his inquiry by asking, “Isn’t the question here how a company can protect itself from unlimited damages?”
No, John, that isn’t the question. The question is: how can people be protected from unlimited damage?
A jury had awarded $5 billion in damages, but the Bush-wacked Supreme Court said, “No, it’ll be more like ten percent of that.” Thanks to the antisocial, pro-corporate ideology of certain “justices” still seated on the Court for life, the oil titan paid just $507 million (10 percent) of the $5 billion damage settlement that a lower, better court had arranged, and just $25 million (17 percent) of its $150 million initial fine. The payments were a tiny, momentary blip on Exxon’s profit spreadsheets—and a second catastrophe for the real lives of real people of actual communities. Nineteen years after the Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, some plaintiffs received their final payment. Others had already died.
And today the Court remains stacked with Bush appointees as thoughtless, more heartless, and more pro-business than it was then.
The aftermath of the Exxon Valdez spill—its devastating effect on the region’s wildlife, its long-lasting depression of fish prices, the social and economic strains that followed, Exxon’s antisocial behavior and the way the Supreme Court swam with it into the toilet—set the bar so low, it’s as if someone dug a trench and threw the bar in. One nation under oil. The Exxon Valdez spill was more than a tragedy, more than a crime. It remains a national stain and a national trauma. The fear that this Gulf blowout will be “as bad as the Exxon Valdez” will remain in hearts, on minds, and on lips throughout.
Back on May 6, President Obama had declared a three-week moratorium on exploratory oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, to give his administration time to review safety regulations and the quality of government oversight. While