Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour says that when it comes to BP's oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, nobody has more to lose than BP itself.
I think right now every oil company in the world says, I don’t want to pay $100 million a day to cut corners on drilling a well. And that’s where I believe the market system works. Nobody’s got more to lose in this deal than BP.
Obviously, BP will suffer to some extent as a consequence of its oil spill, but that doesn't mitigate the foolishness of Barbour's argument. His claim is that companies like BP will police themselves because they are afraid of the negative consequences that flow from these kinds of disasters. That's absurd on its face! This isn't the first spill or oil well blowout, so BP was aware of the potential for this kind of disaster yet they still cut corners, making increasingly risky decisions that ultimately led to the disaster.
If Barbour's argument had any merit, BP would never have jeopardized the lives, livelihood, quality of life, and property of innocent third parties. But they did. And the amazing thing is that even after the extent of the devastation became apparent, Barbour was more worried about saving BP than making sure people were compensated. In fact, one of the reasons why BP was willing to take the risks they did was that they correctly believed guys like Barbour (who used to be an oil industry lobbyist) would use their positions of power to defend BP in the event of disaster instead of holding them accountable.
Even if Barbour were willing to let BP fail as a result of its failure to correctly operate the well, his willingness to allow companies to impose tremendous risk on bystanders is callous in the extreme. On the same day that he was arguing that nobody has more at stake than BP, his state announced that every inch of its territorial waters had been closed to fishing. Thanks to BP, there's no place left along the Mississippi coast where you are allowed to fish -- nowhere.
Even more distressing, we learned that oil has entered the food chain in the Gulf, infesting crab larvae off the coast of Biloxi, raising the prospect that BP's oil spill may have spoiled the Gulf Coast fishing industry for years.
And now, the same folks who fought to weaken safety standards and cut spill preparedness budgets while expanding drilling want us to believe that it's BP who will end up being its own biggest victim. No thanks.