black Gold: God & Oil

Black Gold: God & Oil from Rob Bee on Vimeo.

I don’t want to write a blog this month; it’s too hard.

When we were researching an earlier café sundae topic we chanced upon some material about oil and decided it was a topic worth looking at so we put it in the diary. Then as we’ve been preparing for this café sundae we’ve realised the problem. With many topics we’ve tackled we’ve struggled to find enough material that we can use, but this month it’s been the opposite problem. The scale of the mountain we were asking to climb was above and beyond anything we’ve tackled before and it became apparent that we would have to be less ambitious in our aims if we were to do any justice to what we looked at. All we could hope to do was a quick ramble around the foothills, and leave the summit to another day.

I guess the problem stems from just how important oil is to the modern western way of life. Oil and its derivatives have been used for thousands of years, but it’s only in the last couple of hundred years that the industry has really taken off. Petrochemicals now get used to manufacture a massive range of products we use every day – from plastics and cosmetics to fertilizers and medicines, It provides the fuel that brings the world to our feet and take our feet into the world, it’s even in our bank accounts – Most banks invest heavily in the petrochemical industry as it’s a pretty safe bet to yield good returns. It’s become a massively important part of the world economy and also as important to us individually too.

Over the last decade the price of petrol hasn’t been too far from the top of the newssheets or indeed far from people’s conversations. The oil companies year after year make record profits and yet the price of petrol keeps going upwards – people sense an injustice and it has lead to popular protest. Oil has become so important to people that they expect private companies to virtually give it away, to give us petrol on the same kind of terms as we get our water. But why should they? Oil companies are private businesses and when they were founded they were allowed to sell their product as any other company could – it’s only because they have been so successful in their business and their product has become so important that we expect them to act differently for our benefit.

Far be it for me to defend the oil companies though. The magnitude of the issue we have tried to look at seems to be due to the oil companies knowing their power and importance and acting as if they are above the law. I can’t do justice to the issues in this short space, but let me outline a couple of areas for you: and I’m not going to name companies individually – partly as they all seem to be as bad as each other and partly because if you care about these issues and you want to know more details you can do your own research easily enough.

The first place that oil companies fail is with regard to the environment. Oil is dirty stuff and we’ve all seen the effects of oil tanker spills. We’ve seen news footage of the miles of devastated coastline, black tide ebbing and glooping on black beaches, birds and other wildlife unable to escape the clutches of a black slow death. We have to accept that some accidents will happen. But there are allegations that oil companies could do more to prevent such occurances and frustration at the slowness of their response in the clean up when spillages occur. But there is worse pollution. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that oil companies aren’t taking interest in the environmental impact of their drilling operations in more hidden corners of the world. Across Europe and America companies have to monitor any levels of toxins they produce and control their emissions. Across Africa and vast areas of Asia the oil companies don’t do this and their product produces many toxins which are allowed to pollute the local environments. Poisonous gasses are allowed to escape, oil allowed to pollute water supplies and the oil workers aren’t supplied with the basic safety gear that their western counterparts are required to wear. All this cuts the price of production, but at what cost?

Unfortunately the problem goes still further. Oil companies have been accused of suppressing opposition where it occurs. In the early 90s the people of the Niger Delta began a peaceful protest against the oil company working in the region. They wanted environmental and economic justice and basic human rights. Ken Saro-wiwa was one of their main spokespeople as well as being an author and television producer. In 1995 he was arrested and hurriedly tried and hanged along with 8 other leaders in the protest movement. The trials are widely regarded as having been rigged and the oil company working in the area has been heavily implicated in the events. They were sued by the families of the deceased and settled out of court to the tune of $15.5 million before any evidence could be heard.

This isn’t an isolated incident of corruption; let’s not forget the last American president. Mr George W and most of the top brass in his administration had come from the oil industry where they had held a number of top jobs. W’s first election win was extremely dubious and is hopefully as close as it is possible to get to election rigging in the world’s only superpower, and then they conspired to manufacture the war in Iraq under the pretence of pro-democracy and WMDs but which most people consider to be about oil.

So you see why I don’t want to write a blog this month – where do you start with that lot and what can you say about making things right? It’s difficult finding a positive as we have to use oil and there is no ethical oil company and therefore seemingly little we as consumers can do with our ethical pounds. All I can really suggest is that the oil companies don’t want these facts becoming common knowledge as it reflects very badly on them, so let’s spread the word and shame the companies into doing the right thing. Like the Old Testament prophets we can shout these stories from the rooftops and shine a spotlight into the shady areas of the world where these actions currently go on unseen.