Steven Seagal: How many oil spills can we endure?

In the award-winning 1994 film, On Deadly Ground, which Steven Seagal directed and starred in, he plays Forrest Taft, an Alaska oil roughneck who sets out to stop the destruction of the wilderness at the hands of profit-crazed oil barons. The speech is as relevant today as then:

Big Oil – First Nigeria then the World

Big oil in Nigeria – executions, pollution and suffering (Image)

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By Michael Collins

The big oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is not the first to threaten a people’s way of life.

Just ask the Ogoni people from Nigeria’s oil rich central Niger Delta. Their experience over decades offers a model of things to come without serious changes in consumption and regulation.

Since the early 1960’s, oil spilled from Shell pipelines has fouled their region. Food and fresh water sources vanished. Their economy collapsed. While Shell and the Nigerian elite reap their rewards, the people in the polluted oil regions live with steadily declining jobs, incomes, and living standards.

The amount of oil spilled in just this region during the 1970’s far exceeds that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. The problem has been continuous since then. Most of it is still sitting there.

The Sovereign State of BP – Down for the Count?

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By Michael Collins

British Petroleum has operated as though it were a sovereign state since its inception. When they blew the well at their Macondo Prospect in the Gulf of Mexico, it never occurred to them that they would have to take orders from anybody. But that may change largely due to their inability to stop the flow of oil after nearly sixty days of gushing.

President Obama was clear in his speech last night. If any entity is going down as a result of the catastrophe, it will be BP. Today, Obama meets with BP’s Chairman of the Board, Carl-Henric Svanberg, and the man he told the chairman to fire, Chief Executive Officer Tony Hayward.

Two sovereign states will collide. The outcome is a foregone conclusion.

The White House, Big Oil, and the ‘American Power Act’

By Michael Collins

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This analysis looks behind the scenes at how the ban on offshore drilling was lifted and what that had to do with the ultimate prize for big oil, the American Power Act. It focuses on the current administration. That in no way implies that the problem originated in January 2009. The out sized and destructive influence of the oil monopoly has been with us for since the 1870’s.

Banning Offshore Drilling

In 1969 a Unocal oil rig off the coast of Santa Barbara, California began leaking oil. The extent of the leak, damage to wildlife, and the shoreline caused considerable outrage. The state of California banned offshore drilling shortly after the leak. In 1980, Congress banned offshore drilling in most federally controlled waters. President George H.W. Bush reluctantly banned off shore drilling in 1990 for California, Florida, Oregon and Washington and in the North Atlantic.