Big Oil and their friends

After 59 long days, BP CEO Tony Hayward, finally appeared in front of congress to testify on Gulf oil spill disaster, the worst oil disaster in American history. To the least, he was extremely evasive and the most common phrase in his all day long testimony was “I can’t answer that question”. Apparently, BP still doesn’t have a solution for the problem and still cannot present even a broad estimate of the extent of disaster. BP still doesn’t seem to be caring much about ones, their president Carl-Henric Svanberg call “small people”. At the meeting with president Obama, BP agreed to pay for a twenty billion dollar fund, aimed at paying for the claims arising from disaster. Though, even the most conservative estimates make it look like hardly a down payment on total cost. What makes me really mad is that some in congress are still trying to pay back their debt to the oil companies. Most prominent of them is Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who has received at least $100,470 in political contributions from oil and gas interests since the beginning of 2009, the second-highest among all the committee members. This shameless guy actually apologized BP for what he called $20 billion “shakedown”. Is there any limit on how low these corporate pimps can go? This is when there is no doubt that several lawmakers have found serious criminal negligence in the maintenance of oil wells by BP. Clearly, there have been instance, when BP preferred saving money and time over safety, security and responsibility and even fired the whistle blowers. At the top of all this, as usual, what I haven’t heard yet, are these criminal BP executives are going to get a punishment that is even equal to one that is supposed to be given to a hungry person who stole a loaf of bread from a store?

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