Apology OK | Brussels Blog

Apology OK

OK, I apologise. The leaking Deepwater Horizon well did not discharge twenty five thousand barrels of oil a day. I was wrong. In fact, it discharged on average sixty thousand barrels of oil a day and released in total, give or take a few thousand barrels, five million barrels of crude oil into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. I am truly sorry for underestimating the magnitude of the disaster. The problem was that I allowed myself to be swayed by the experts at BP. They, you will recall, initially put the leak at one thousand barrels and later upwardly revised it to five thousand. You would think that with all their expertise they might have got a bit nearer the mark. It just goes to show what happens when you leave the technical stuff to the PR department.

What is John Hofmeister Telling America?

Today, (the 27th July 2010), I watched John Hofmeister being interviewed on the BBC’s “Hardtalk”. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mg2m/episodes/player?page=1

Mr Hofmeister is a former head of the Royal Dutch Shell Oil company in the USA. Now, he presents himself as a hard talking maverick insider from the oil industry and has in this role recently written a book, the title of which apparently, says it all; “Why We Hate the Oil Companies”

Oil Gushing From the North Sea?

Last week, I was amused to read an article in The Sunday Times which described the renaissance of the North Sea oil field. For those of you who are not interested in the nitty-gritty of oil statistics relating to production in the North Sea – on the basis that life is too short and there are better things to do – here is a brief overview. The oil is running out. In 1999 the UK produced 2.9 million barrels a day. In 2009 the figure was down to 1.5 barrels a day. The mathematicians amongst you will note that production has almost halved in the last decade. No wonder that our erstwhile Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, in 2008 took to exhorting the oil companies to increase production. He had seen the figures and was desperate. The revenues that come from the production of oil have been a substantial but largely unsung benefit to the British economy for the last thirty years. Unfortunately, it seems no one bothered to tell Mr. Brown that once a field goes into decline no amount of pumping can bring it back to life.

The Gulf Oil Spill Why Worry ?

I am worried about the “spill” in the Gulf of Mexico for a number of reasons. First whatever it is, it is definitely not a spill. A spill is what happens when you knock over a cup of coffee or accidently ground an oil tanker on an inconveniently placed reef. What is happening on the sea bed of the Gulf is not spillage. In fact, I am at a loss to find the right noun to describe a fountain of oil and gas pushing its way out of the bowels of the earth at enormous pressure before settling, ominously, in a giant slick off the coast of the United States of America. It ain’t a spill it’s a full blown disaster .We all know that, even that nice Mr. Hayward is beginning to come round to that way of thinking; particularly as the share price of BP has plunged and even his chums in the industry are saying that it really wasn’t such a good idea to place considerations of cost over safety and of course they would have done it differently, even though they all share the same safety plan. So, why don’t we take a deep breath and look at the real implications of the disaster. How bad is it, and what does it augur?