There is no such thing as a "British" or "American" oil company anymore.
BP owns numerous smaller American companies and companies in other countries. Same with Exxon. These companies are truly multi-national.

BP has broken US environmental laws by causing significant pollution. it is also becoming clear that BP (British), Transocean (Swiss) and Halliburton (American) all cut corners and did not operate in a safe manner. If this is true, BP having hired these other companies and owning the well has the liability for the release. They should have insisted and insured that all safety precautions were taken. Burned out batteries on the Blow Out Preventer, sub-standard casing cementing procedures, the lack of proper drilling mud present in the drill pipe, etc all should have been avoided. If so, there would have been much less of a chance of a blowout. This is especially true as they were drilling in an area where extremely high subsurface pressures were known to exist and they knew they needed to be careful.

If more information on lack of following standard safety procedures keeps surfacing, someone in BP should be criminally liable. the long term effect on the environment is going to be huge. I have a friend who works for Alabama and his decriptions of the oil affecting the beaches and estuaries makes you sick.
(MichaelS wasn't picked again, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 15:06, 3 replies)

Halliburton
Dubai company for tax purposes. Ex US VP is a senior director!
(Set your faces to Stunned Bigly, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 15:25, closed)

When did that happen?
When I was working in the oil and gas industry (25-30 years ago drilling gas wells) Halliburton was still a good 'Merican company with US flags on every truck and its employees drinking only American beer etc!

(They were the most conservative people I ever had the displeasure to work with. They would fire anyone who grew a beard. even on the early 1980's they never seemed to hire anyone who wasn't white. I remember eating luch with a rep one day (we paid them a lot of money to do our well completion so they woudl buy us lunch now and again) and he spent the entire lunch talking about fucking hippies this and fucking hippies that with the ocassional "sand nigger" thrown in when talking about the middle east. I refused to ever attend any Halliburton social events after that even if they did buy good booze. It was too hard for me to keep my mouth shut).
(MichaelS wasn't picked again, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 15:45, closed)

2007

(Set your faces to Stunned Bigly, Thu 17 Jun 2010, 10:27, closed)

of course I agree BP should pay...
... i'm just saying it's much easier for Obama to continually re-condemn a pseudo-foreign Company than a pseudo-American one. And indeed he is taking full advantage.
(haberman is singing in the changes, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 15:31, closed)

nothing of the sort is "becoming clear"
US politicians and the press are spouting. There's no actual evidence of any wrongdoing. The only thing that is cast iron is that US blow-out protection regulations are much, much weaker than european ones.
( the mighty badger Aphrodite, on a bar stool, by your side, Wed 16 Jun 2010, 18:03, closed)