America questions BP amid toxic oil cleanup
Updated on 05 May 2010
As oil continues to leak into the Gulf of Mexico, Alex Thomson writes from Louisiana that congressmen in Washington are now referring to BP as "Bayou Polluter".
The faintest splash is all you hear - and you're lucky even to notice that.
Then the tell-tale ripple in these caramel-muddy waters gives you another clue.
Finally the black, log-like head at the surface. Hazel, unblinking eyes gazing back at you, emotionless, from perhaps thirty feet away or less.
The alligators of the Mississippi Delta, unaware of course of the vast, silent threat to their existence, not far away, out in the open waters of the Gulf.
There are egrets, ibises, pelicans and kingfishers on every side. High overhead buzzards circle some unseen carcase. A lone osprey passes us in our small boat.
With me, Prof Rick Steiner, one of the leading US experts on the impact of oil spills. He's down here from Alaska, a veteran of the Exxon Valdez catastrophe.
"Crude oil is highly toxic," he says as our skipper Kerry cuts the speed to a crawl, "if it gets into an ecosystem like this it will be impossible to remove."
He's astonished and dismayed that super-rich BP did not have the latest failure-technology in place. They did not even have crude low-tech metal cone caps either.
"It is astounding that they only started building a wellhead cap after the burst. That's like waiting around for the fire to take hold before you even think about prevention."
Up on Capitol Hill congressmen call BP "Bayou Polluter". The oil giant calls its latest meeting there "constructive". Congressmen found BP evasive, obstructive and seemingly ignorant of recent safety surveys of deepwater drilling.
BP talk about giving Gulf states $25m straight off to by-pass red tape. That's small change to a company measuring profits in the tens of billions.
Which is why federal government (with enthusiastic White House support) is urgently trying to abolish current laws limiting oil company liability to millions, not billions.
And the slick? Well who can say.
Satellite and aerial imaging shows it lurking several miles off the Delta and it could, just possibly, remain offshore where dispersants can do their work.
But nobody is betting on that. Thousands of volunteers; flotillas of fishing boats banned from fishing; the national guard and the coastguard stand ready.
