Reminds me of the 2010 BP oil spill. They didn't do much about that either! Corporate greed in USA is beyond shocking.
Everyone in USA loved to say the company was 'British Petroleum' but it was the Macondo Prospect, a USA ship and crew, operating under the loose USA laws, and that
the largest stake in the company is owned by BP America, that ignoring guidelines is an endemic issue in the States, that caused the spill. Or that BP was originally 'Amoco', a 100% American company, or that they pressured to have the British CEO replaced by an original American businessman from Amoco after the spill - making the issue even more American. But naturally the USA became fixated with 'British', even when any other branch of the company can't legally operate on US soil/waters thanks to the exclusivity of the Jones Act. It was only following the media uproar that they began the relief, meaning they had already left it for two weeks, and a further two weeks to figure out they needed at least two ships on the relief effort. BP America's first thought was to create an underwater explosion to block the spill - I ask you! The second thought, which they carried out, was to burn the oil releasing all that CO2 and more into our atmosphere.
Finally there was a better response. Now, I'm not saying that the British umbrella company wasn't culpable - it absolutely was - but what's so damaging is the USA's tendency to spend all it can in legal fees to keep on protecting the worst interests for the environment in favour of corporate greed. For instance BP America lawyers insisted that the case be made against 'British Petroleum' and not 'British Petroleum America' - which would have been the correct address - before it even got taken to court. The fees and charges were therefore levied against the entire company and not the guilty branch. From an environmentalists point of view you might be thinking 'oh good that the whole company got affected' but this actually meant that no USA laws were changed in order to protect the environment from future spills (there was only a six month suspension, lifted by October 2010) because it couldn't specifically target the issue - and American oil laws are a bane to the whole world.
This allowed them to leave 25% of the oil spill untreated; apparently a 75% clean up was enough. That means the US government allowed 195,000 m^3 of oil to be completely left in the Gulf of Mexico. In fact Canada was so shocked with its neighbours inaction that its National Energy Board wrote to all American oil companies asking them to explain themselves (about the lack of new safety measures). The USA Coastguard said, in 2014, that the affects of this remaining oil were continuing to have devastating repercussions that needed addressing. BP America has still not responded. So the coastguard continues to clean the oil to this day, without the proper tools to do so, allowing BP America to
levy the burden onto the American taxpayer.
America refused international help from a plethora of willing countries. Again this was out of protection for the Jones Act which only allows American commercial 'marine' activity within American borders. President Obama finally wavered the act to allow 8 out of 70 assistance offers through to help, much to the disliking of oil lobbyists.
Over 8.3 thousand ocean species in the gulf were affected by the spill, yet BP suffered only 11 counts of manslaughter in court. The water pollution in Louisiana covered a 10 mile in-land radius and has hurt the health of so many families in 'Erin Brockovich' style.
Many people do not know what happened to the oil spill after it dropped out of the news, or the fact that oil spills occur on a regular basis around the world. Only a drop in stock value speaks to these companies.
