A response to the Futerra blog........ http://www.futerra.co.uk/blog/921#
There are some valid criticisms to be made about the BP Sustainability report, but these are the wrong ones!
The report has 7 pages relating to the Gulf of Mexico disaster and it spells out in some detail the amounts of money paid out and what it is doing, much of that with named local NGO’s and scientists. Would we really fell better informed if there was a broad range of numbers of barrels of oil spilled; except, of course, that it would have to be in gallons, because that’s a bigger number! The number, in any case, is meaningless; what’s important is the impact and that is very complex to assess. However, as the report says, significant funds have been made available to understand the implications more fully; we should be ensuring that BP report on these issues promptly and that BP help commentators to understand them.
But this is not an argument about facts, it’s emotional. You talk about sustainability as if it’s possible to sustain anything without fossil fuels and then rubbish an investment of $1 billion, which is quite a lot of money, particularly when invested in long term projects, with no guaranteed rate of return. Yes, I understand the environmental implications, but there is disagreement about what the objectives are and how they might be achieved.
There are 8 pages in the report, which describe BP’s view of the energy future and what they are doing, which in simple terms seem to revolve around energy supply, efficiencies, sequestration and renewables; how much of each you may not like, but don’t deny it’s there!
The third party voice given most space is not a third party at all, but the company that ‘assures’ the report, so one would expect comment. It would be more relevant to challenge the use of auditors to fulfil this role, than simply to describe them as BP’s auditors!
There is no denying that this was a dreadful accident and much remains to be done to ensure that it doesn’t happen again and we should all be wary of the risky nature of oil exploration, but more regulation is not the way and carping criticism does not get you listened to, except by your own constituency. The Gulf of Mexico is one of the most heavily regulated oil provinces in the world; those regulations and the regulators also failed; more won’t help.
In the aftermath of the disaster, BP acted with commendable speed and commitment, whilst saying some pretty dumb things; and I hope the chairman has a torrid time on Thursday. But we should consider that no government or insurance company would have paid out so much, so quickly as BP did. This does not by any means excuse what happened, but they took responsibility and action and for that they deserve some credit!
As one of my colleagues said ‘A blind bat could criticise BP after last year’s disaster’, we should be more constructive than that.
In the interests of transparency, I am a BP pensioner and shareholder.
No comments:
Post a Comment