I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent oil rig disaster off the coast of Mexico, for which BP has been held almost solely responsible for by not only the US media, but also by our own media. As with most things, the general public love a scape goat, and for better or for worse, BP has been given this dubious honour. This would not usually particularly bother me, after all, companies as big as BP can afford to lose some face and money. Instead, what bothers me is a combination of things; 1. the number of Americans who are actually holding the British public responsible for the disaster, 2. the amount of direct US involvement which may have caused the explosion.

Let’s look at “British Petroleum” at a corporate level; who owns it? A quick search reveals that the majority shareholder of the “British” company is in fact JPMorgan Chase, a banking firm that is in fact American. It owns nearly 30% of BP, which gives JPMorgan Chase the privilege of being named the “Global Ultimate Owner” of the company. In fact, if you tote up the percentages, you will find that BP is actually more American than it is British.

If we ignore that fact, and simply look at the disaster from a safety standpoint, there is, again, less British involvement than first thought. For example, the oil rig “Deep Horizon” was not owned by BP. It was in fact owned by Transocean, an American company which leased the rig to BP. In addition, 79 of the 126 crew aboard the rig were from Transocean, with only 7 from BP. The contract between BP and Transocean also stated that technically Transocean would be solely responsible for all the staff aboard the rig, as they were the company actually operating it, with only the oil drilled belonging to BP. As for the safety inspections, these were conducted by the Bureau of Ocean Energy, an agency of the US government no less! According to a report by the Associated Press, the last inspections were extremely “lax”, had poor record keeping, and were conducted in less than 2 hours.

Moving on to the actual cause of the accident also reveals heavy US involvement. Whilst it is not entirely certain what caused the explosion, it is likely that a faulty cement case may have been the cause. This cement casing was placed by Halliburton, a major American company that is involved with oilfield services. It was constructed about 20 hours before the explosion, and had been properly tested by Halliburton to check its structural integrity. Despite this, it had appeared to have failed, which may have lead to the accident. Had it been placed and had been properly set, it could have prevented the explosion from occurring. Whilst this is purely speculative, it is galling to think that the whole accident may have been the responsibility of an American company.

As you can see, there is far less British involvement than first thought. Of course BP has a British heritage, but aside from its history and name, there is really very little that is British about it. Perhaps it was the face of BP, CEO Tony Hayward, which caused the Americans (and to some extents, the British public ourselves) to blame the British for the disaster. After all, he was the poster boy, and to some extent whipping boy, of the press and the American Courts. The fact that he pretty much conformed to the stereotype of an “English Gentlemen” couldn’t have helped sway public opinion towards thinking of anything but direct British involvement. Therefore, my point is this: don’t take everything at face value, and try to look beyond the headlines to hold an opinion on something that is both unbiased by the media and hearsay.