Oil Exploration: Often a Dirty Business

Posted in: Opinion on July 26, 2010 at 4:06 pm |

By Douglas E. Hall

It’s a dirty business bringing oil out of the earth.  And like gold, black gold has always attracted some men of avarice, some with low scruples ready to turn to high crimes and deceit to control the flow of crude oil.

Today’s posturing over what transpired between Scotland and Libya over plans for British Petroleum (BP) to drill for oil and gas off Libya’s Mediterranean coast in a $900 million deal is but another example of the power of money, oil money.

Did a Scottish court provide an early release from prison to convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset al-Megrahi at the urging of BP to seal the oil deal with the Libyans?  That sounds like a reasonable assumption.

Megrahi, convicted in connection with the 1988 bombing of a U.S. airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland that took 270 lives, (including 190 Americans) was released from prison on compassionate grounds to return to Libya as he was suffering from terminal prostate cancer and was given three months to live.

However, Megrahi is still alive today and in apparent good health.  One of the doctors that certified his three-month life expectancy now reportedly says Megrahi might live another decade.

So now our senators Lautenberg and Menendez, along with their New York counterparts, leap into the breach of missing moral standards and righteously demand that BP fully disclose its public and private communications related to the early release of  . . . Megrahi.”

Big deal.  Even the joint release from the four senators states: “The British oil giant previously acknowledged conversations with the U.K. (United Kingdom) government about prisoner transfers while negotiating a lucrative oil exploration contract with Libya.”

The $900 million oil deal is nothing for the Brits to sneeze at.  Why wouldn’t they release Megrahi with an oil deal of this magnitude hanging in the balance?

Nevertheless, the press release from the four senators states, “Serious questions have been raised about whether justice and punishment for terrorism took a back seat to back-room deals for an oil contract.”

Well, duh.

The senators also called upon the U.S. State Department “to investigate the role that BP may have played in securing the release of Mr. Megrahi.” The letter suggested that “understanding of the Scottish court’s decision to release this murderer (Megrahi) will help us to understand if BP might use blood money to pay claims for damage in the Gulf of Mexico.”

Secretary of State Clinton continued the charade, responding to the senators’ inflammatory letter, promising to look into BP’s involvement.

Senator Lautenberg went one better.  He requested an investigation and hearing by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.

Just where are we headed with all of this?  Breaking off relations with Britain?  Kicking BP out of our country, just as they seemed to have stopped the “damn leak” as President Obama once characterized it?

Blood money or not, Wall Street trading of BP stock saw this stock rise 9 percent.  In fact one of the biggest boosters of BP stock has been Shokri, Ghanem, chairman of Libya’s National Oil company, who recommended that Libya’s sovereign wealth fund take advantage of what had been BPs depressed stock price.

Now that BP is set to drill in the Gulf of Sidra off the coast of Libya, industry sources estimate BP stands to make billions in profit from this new enterprise.

As the thirst for black gold expands around the world, companies such as BP will work to fill this need whether it be in the Gulf of Mexico or the Gulf of Sidra.  Oil companies will do what they have to do to fill demand, even if it means cutting a few corners or getting a terrorist sprung from jail.  This is pure capitalism at work, and if the work gets dirty, the work will get done with a wink and a nod.

Tags: Hall Libya oil