BP face angry protests at AGM today

Oily protesters in action

The board of BP plc is likely to get the drilling of their corporate careers today. Unless they have imposed an iron grip on proceedings, in a Gaddafi-like manner, they will hear protests outside the hall and within it. Many angry fishermen, small business owners, state officials and others have become shareholders. The fact that in most corporate entities shareholders get fewer democratic rights than an oil rich autocracy is no reason not to try to have your say.

BP has a history of ducking and diving. Oil and water don't mix and the Gulf of Mexico experience proves that point exceptionally well. I do get a sense that BP is trying to make amends, as their website quite openly shows, with the orange tab (in stark contrast to the green) indicating "Gulf of Mexico restoration". However, a more contrite approach today would be helpful.

The Republican Party is against tax raising to help out with the current financial situation as they say this will stifle job creation. But it is the corporate mentality of being above the law, of riding roughshod over regulations that causes small business to suffer. Big business can clobber with impunity it seems. When they get caught out, they suffer for a while. But it is the enterprising business people who create their own businesses that can get knocked out of the water, literally.

Maybe saying sorry might be a better start than sitting on stage like a politburo ensemble batting questions into the long grass.

Gulf of Mexico oil disaster was avoidable, says presidential comission

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was an avoidable disaster that resulted from management failures by BP PLC and its main contractors, a presidential commission has concluded. But the accident also reflected "systemic failures" by the oil industry and its government regulators to deal with the risks of deep-water oil exploration, the panel said. They go on to use such comments as "individual missteps and oversights" and "the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur." But we knew that all along. More or less as soon as it happened people in the know were singing like canaries. This report just puts those songs down on paper!

One has to wonder if anything is going to change in the corporate pysche. Those managing these large corporations seem to have the idea that the 21st century allows them to ease up on integrity and pump up the deceit and the cunning and the spin. One day they might find good folk turning on them when the sheriff's out of town. Haven't they made any New Year's resolutions to be good guys?

BP in crude political dilemma

The American people seem to want their president to be some kind of cross between a genie in a bottle and a jack in the box. He is, of course, neither. But disasters always lead to a belief that the president is the chief fixer as well as the Chief. So President Obama is now involved in some form of crude politics in order to rid the Gulf of Mexico of crude oil. Calling BP "British Petroleum" just ratchets up the blame game but it hardly serves to find a real solution. The truth is that there were three other American companies giving willing support to BP in their quest for deep sea oil wealth. And it's not as if BP is exclusively British. American investors have a sizeable share in the global conglomerate. Perhaps we should call it Anglo-American-Sino-Hispanic-Franco-Teutonic Petroleum.

BP is being asked for billions of dollars to help with the clean-up. Where is all this money going to go? First off, I hope it will have a properly audited paper trail and not just be doled out to porkbarrel merchants and get-rich-quick consultants. Will some be given in compensation? Who will decide how much each deserving case should get? A lot more questions will be forthcoming. I hope the answers will be honest and straightforward. What we don't want is filthy lucre literally contaminated by the globular oil it is expected to remove.

In the course of events some will lose their livelihoods, others will gain massively by obtaining cleaning contracts they never dreamed of. This could well be the biggest redistribution of wealth in a single episode of history. We just need to keep a check on who gets what in President Obama's counting house handouts.