Direct fire at Government, says BP chief
ANOTHER normal day in the life of BP Amoco. Greenpeace has taken over one of
its oil platforms, British motorists are urged to boycott its pumps, the oil
price is rising again, oh, and the business made $40m a day in the second
quarter of this year.
This is the world of Beyond Parody, as BP would rather we didn't call it,
following its expensive design makeover, sunflower-style symbol and "beyond
petroleum" sign-off line. At present, there is little doubt that, beyond
petroleum, there is a black hole, so to speak. Without oil, BP would be a
sad little business, and, while there is more to the industry than gasoline,
it's what makes the West run, and what we all care most passionately about.
BP was asking for trouble in scrapping the old shield, and replacing it with
something implying that the world can be powered by sunflowers, sunshine or,
just as plausibly, Sunny Delight. Just as the latter only looks like orange
juice, so the former only look like alternatives to oil.
Sir John Browne, BP's feisty chief executive, was being suitably bullish
yesterday, as well he might have been. It already seems a long time since
crude cost $10 a barrel, when he moved to bag a brace of American oil
companies while prices were depressed. Both Amoco and Arco look like
bargains today.
Higher crude prices bring the cash pouring in, and now it is worth finding
again, he plans to pour money out looking for more oil, to ease the Middle
East's stranglehold on supplies. This is the background that makes
Greenpeace's action so pathetic. As a protest against BP exploring in the
Arctic, it boarded the Northstar offshore platform as it was being towed by
barge to its site in the Arctic.
Greenpeace plans to set up a communications centre on board, powered by wind
and solar power, to highlight the threat from global warming to polar bears
and walruses. It is almost Beyond Parody, and you might have thought
Greenpeace would know better after the Brent Spar.
In that incident, aided and abetted by News at Ten, which preferred dramatic
pictures to intelligent journalism, Greenpeace bounced Shell/Esso into
abandoning its plan to dump the platform in the deep Atlantic. Only later
did the organisation quietly admit its estimates of "pollution" were wildly
overstated.
As for the Dump the Pump campaign, it will make not a scrap of difference.
BP claims it is making less than 1p a litre from selling us petrol, and,
while it may be making $40m, or about �27m, a day from its world-wide
efforts, the British government is making �63m a day from fuel duty, merely
by banking the cheque.
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