The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), whose headquarters is in Vienna, Austria, does not mention or comment about the Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion off Louisiana coast on its website,
http://www.opec.org/ OPEC's mission is described as follows:
... the mission of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is to coordinate and unify the petroleum policies of its Member Countries and ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of petroleum to consumers, a steady income to producers and a fair return on capital for those investing in the petroleum industry.
Since the U.S. is not a Member of OPEC, the organization may consider the Louisiana oil rig disaster as irrelevant to its concerns and therefore not comment about it. However the impact of the disaster is far-reaching and global -- environmentally, economically, and politically. There are many questions about the risk and effects of similar disasters occurring at other current or future off-shore oil drilling operations in the U.S. and elsewhere. Of course, we are asking what are / should be the roles and responsibilities of BP and other companies associated with Deepwater Horizon, the U.S. Government and its regulatory agencies, etc. But we should also ask:
- What are / should be the roles and responsibilities of organizations like OPEC in this disaster?
- What are / should be the roles and responsibilities of other organizations, governments, and corporations in Europe in a global-impact disaster like this one?
- As "global citizens," what are / should be OUR individual and collective roles and responsibilities in this? Is this an opportunity to rethink our enormous dependence on oil, and seek ways to change that?
I think we have once again been provided an excellent opportunity to move the country in a direction away from oil. How many wake up calls do we need? OPEC has wisely stayed as far away from the debate as possible realizing there is little benefit or assitance they can offer. The Deepwater Horizon rig appears to have state of the art technical ability to drill for oil more then 1 mile down with little thought put into the what ifs of problems at this depth. The way of life for generations of coastal residents is in serious jepeordy and naturally we will all pay for this disaster.
ReplyDeleteIs it wise though for OPEC to stay away? There is only a finite amount of oil in the world and even though they do not control the sources of BP it still has to have an effect on their collective resource. Perhaps now they may have to increase production on their end of things because of the oil spill. I dont think it makes sense that it wont effect them at all.
ReplyDeleteIt might just be a matter of time before we see what actions they take as a result.