Corporate Social Responsibility Failures in the Oil Industry
Edited by Charles Woolfson and Matthias Beck
Baywood Publishing Co., New York, 2005
216 pp.
REVIEW BY BARRY HEALY
Oil drilling on land or at sea is always risky but the oil giants promise good governance, a clean environment and safety. This collection of academic papers shows that they deliver corruption, pollution and death.
Between 1970 and 1995 more than 1200 workers were killed worldwide in offshore oil industry accidents. Complete figures for deaths since then are not available, but from 1995 to 2001 35 people died as a result of fires or explosions.
Corporate Social Responsibility Failures in the Oil Industry restricts its investigations to a small number of northern hemisphere cases, from Alaska to Azerbaijan. But the detailed case studies are damning — the oil majors are not to be trusted.
Two shocking incidents looked at in depth are the 1982 Ocean Ranger sinking and the 1988 Piper Alpha disaster.
The huge, semi submersible drilling rig, the Ocean Ranger went down off Newfoundland in the middle of a severe winter storm. At the time it was the world's largest such vessel, designed to withstand 185 kilometre-per-hour winds and 33-metre seas.
How could it sink? Because a porthole near the waterline gave way and seawater destroyed vital equipment.
For the price of a few dollars worth of hardened glass 84 workers died.
The Piper Alpha disaster in the North Sea was even more gruesome. The platform was the centre of a network of pipes from other rigs pumping to the shore.
None of the managers of the other rigs wanted to take responsibility for cutting off the oil flow. So, as the Piper Alpha burned, oil was pumped into the flames.
One hundred and sixty seven men died horrible deaths.
The UK Offshore Operators Association, an employers' grouping, coined two phrases as part of their PR response: "Safety is our number 1 priority" and "A safe platform is a profitable one".
So-called "regulatory capture" was a feature in both catastrophes. That expression means the political control of the responsible government authority by the industry, which talks safety, but practices risk.
Union organisation was weak. The companies, used to US-style working environments, would run "troublemakers" off the job.
However, following the Piper Alpha fire, maintenance workers occupied the rigs over two successive "summers of discontent". They formed the Offshore Industry Liaison Committee (OILC) to press their safety claims.
The OILC evolved into a union in its own right, militantly unaffiliated to the Trades Union Congress. Companies have fought tooth and nail to keep it out of the industry, even though the workers vote repeatedly for it as their union.
The pressure for union rights grew overwhelmingly until Tony Blair's New Labour government saved the corporations through the 1999 Employment Relations Act, which allowed the companies to cut recognition deals with tame-cat TUC affiliates and exclude the popular OILC.
Canadian and British royal commissions followed the Ocean Ranger and the Piper Alpha tragedies. The corporations loudly accepted all the recommendations and then argued in the back rooms against every regulation that was meant to implement the proposals.
Employee safety representatives in any industry would find the two chapters dealing with these events very practical reading.
Azerbaijan is blessed (or cursed) with huge reserves of oil and the US government wants it piped through countries that it considers suitable.
A couple of different pipelines have been constructed, each one associated with political coups (Azerbaijan), invasion (Chechnya), environmental destruction (Georgia) and political bullying by US representatives.
A charming feature of these developments is that employment contracts for locals are written in English.
But the preferred supply option of the US is the massive BTC pipeline to be built right across Turkey to the port of Ceyhan. BP, now that it is a major Anglo-American firm is happily obliging.
Host government agreements (HGAs) have been drawn up with the countries through which it must pass. Essentially, the "host governments" have signed away sovereignty over huge areas of their land.
If Turkey passes laws that affect the consortium, it must be compensated. BP and its partners have the right to terminate the HGA, but Turkey does not.
The consortium can prevent villages from building near the pipeline, even on land not part of the pipeline corridor. But the consortium can build what it likes, no matter the effects on nearby land, without compensation.
The consortium gets unfettered access to water, regardless of the needs of locals. And, in the event of an oil spill, there is a complete exemption from liability.
How likely is an oil spill? The route for the BTC pipeline is right on top of the North Anatolian fault, site of at least 17 major earthquakes since 1924.
Corporate Social Responsibility Failures in the Oil Industry is academic in style and aimed at safety specialists. But it is accessible enough for the concerned layperson to read and gather powerful evidence against the greedy oil corporations.
As the editors say in their afterword: the oil corporations require "neither rule of law, democracy, nor respect for individual rights to survive and prosper".
From Green Left Weekly, March 15, 2006.
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