Cheap prices and high tax revenues underpin America's love of Big Oil

[FarCenter]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/28/us-regulation-oil-industry-mms

The American public have been told by government that oil industry regulation has been undermined by drugs, pornography and ethical transgression.

But politicians in Washington are less keen to admit that they and the wider public have all allowed themselves to be seduced by the cheap petrol and tax provided by BP and the rest of Big Oil. The interior department has created good headlines and bought time for Barack Obama by releasing details of a report into the working of one of its own agencies, the Minerals Management Service.

This review by the department's acting inspector general, Mary Kendall, outlined how staff at the oil industry's chief safety watchdog, MMS, accepted tickets to sporting events, lunches and hunting trips from oil and gas firms.


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The wider issue in Britain – as in America – is the financial muscle of companies such as BP and the importance they have in keeping transport running and power stations working.

BP, a core shareholding in many UK pension schemes, has not been owned by the government since 1987 yet ministers continue to bat on its behalf. When BP found a Russian firm had "appropriated" some assets in Siberia it triggered a letter from then prime minister Tony Blair to then president Vladimir Putin calling on him to help.

Blair Petroleum – as it was once dubbed – got its assets back, it is said by insiders, not from Blair's intervention but from an even more powerful world figure: Madeleine Albright, former US secretary of state.

The White House may like to say it is keeping its "boot to the throat" of the oil industry; in fact it knows it's the other way round given America's dependency on foreign crude from what it consider rogue states such as Venezuela. In the west, Big Oil firms, like Big Banks, are too big to bury.