Big Oil Propaganda Machine Talks Back

 Big Oil got its licks in Tuesday. It hammered President Obama for his moratorium on deepwater off-shore drilling as if they couldn't wait one lousy day for a judge to decide. A BP house organ concluded the 60,000 barrels of oil from its blowout well since April 20 was "good for business" in the affected Gulf states.

What else would one expect from an industry acting like Marie Antoinette telling French peasants to eat cake if they didn't appreciate the king's regime.

What galls me about the moratorium whining is that a federal judge in New Orleans is poised tomorrow to rule on that issue brought about by the industry.

But, no, oil titans couldn't resist the temptation to vent their anger at the World National Oil Companies Congress meeting in London Tuesday.

Transocean Ltd. president and CEO Steven Newman said

"There are things the administration could implement today that would allow the industry to go back to work tomorrow without an arbitrary six-month time limit." 

Transocean owns the Deepwater Horizon rig that exploded and killed 11 crew, resulting in the worst accidental environmental disaster in U.S. history.

Judge Martin Feldman has said he will decide by tomorrow whether to overturn the six-month ban. An industry attorney argued Monday that the six-month suspension of drilling work could prove more economically devastating than the spill itself.

"This is an unprecedented industrywide shutdown. Never before has the government done this," the attorney testified.

At the London talks, heckled by protesters, Chevron global vice president for business development Jay Pryor said the drilling moratorium would "constrain supplies for world energy." 

"It would also be a step back for energy security," said Pryor.

Fact: American off-shore oil drilling produces only 2% of the world market supply. 

BP, which leased the platform, says it has paid out $2 billion to try to unsuccessfully cap the blowout and pay damage claims to affected fishermen, businesses and state and local governments. Last week it agreed to an Obama administration request to establish a $20 billion escrow fund and turn its disbursements over to a government-appointed administer.

Now, the Wall Street Journal reports BP's in-house on-line press organ told an audience intended only for BP worshippers:

"Much of the region's [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams."

One BP reporter dispatched to Louisiana quoted a local seafood entrepreneur the region relies on the oil industry for work and "There is no reason to hate BP."

Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that "BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us."


That clapping you hear in the background comes from the grave of Joseph Goebbels.