Perhaps I am oversimplifying the situation — but since the Bush administration is constantly guilty of the same thing in order to push home their agenda, I’ll go with it.
So. BP is closing down the Prudhoe Bay oil field because their pipeline is so horribly corroded that 16 miles must be replaced. In the meantime, the Federal government has offered to open up the Strategic Oil Reserve to replace the lost production.
Here’s the thing. BP made $7.3 billion in profit last quarter — in other words, after expenses like, say, maintenance. They haven’t been cleaning the pipeline because they didn’t think it was necessary, and only checked it after the feds forced them to after a 270,000 gallon oil spill.
Does greed have no end? $7,300,000,000 in profits last quarter, and they couldn’t be bothered to keep their equipment maintained. And now the government wants to release oil from the reserve, paid for by our taxes, so that BP can sell it back to us at $3.50 per gallon?
I spent almost 10 years working in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields as a kitchen supervisor feeding the thousands of men (and women) that help get the oil out of the ground. ARCO and BP like all big corporations, year after year cut costs where ever they could.
One of those cost cutting measures was my wages which I saw go down every year for six years in a row. After six years when my salary as a Kitchen Supervisor equaled that of a dishwasher during my first year there, I walked.
The name of the game is ‘Take the money and run’.
Anyone that doesn’t understand that isn’t paying attention.
ha! the damn BP station in fairfax must generate most of that…its the only close BP to the house, and its 50 cents higher than the shell down the street from it… when my tahoe costs too much as it is, its hell having to had gone there… $106 to fill it that day… usually its like 85 or so…