WCA September 2010

From the americas

Statue of Liberty Image from BigStockPhoto.com Photographer: Marty

Q. How many people are working on the response, and what are they doing? A. Some 36,000 people are involved, according to the Deepwater Horizon Response website overseen by BP. A BP official said that included 1,185 US Coast Guard personnel, 1,282 US National Guardsmen, and 667 BP officials. The bulk of the personnel — a total of nearly 31,000 — work for contractors hired by BP, ranging from United States Environmental Services, based in New Orleans, to Houston-based Response Management. Out on the waters around the broken well, some 27 vessels with 230 crew members and support personnel are burning oil. Some 14,500 people are serving as mariners, crew members, or captains on 2,680 “vessels of opportunity” recruited for the cleanup. Some are skimming oil – either at sea, from specialized skimming vessels, or closer to shore with so-called “drum” skimmers, cylinders with surfaces that attract oil, which is then squeegeed off as the drum spins. China’s signal of an end to the yuan’s fixed rate to the dollar is good news for Sino-American relations — and much else besides The People’s Bank of China on 19 th June indicated that it is abandoning the 6.83 yuan peg to the US dollar, adopted to shield Chinese exporters. While the central bank said that it does not envision “large scale” moves in the its currency, the exchange rate will be allowed greater flexibility over time. China’s unexpected pledge to allow the yuan to appreciate more rapidly against the dollar made for a more peaceful meeting of Group of 20 world leaders the following week in Canada. Very likely, greater harmony at the Toronto summit was a consideration in the timing of the announcement. Beijing’s concession to Washington may also have been calculated to shift the focus away from China and toward the US as the delegates turned their attention to global economic imbalances. Even so, the US welcomed the news that the People’s Bank is prepared to gradually relax its exchange rate mechanism. Many American economists say the yuan is undervalued by as much as 40%, giving China a trading advantage and swelling its reserves to more than $2 trillion. The rigid peg of the yuan to the dollar over the previous 23 months was a source of unremitting friction with the US, whose exports will become more competitive with China’s as the yuan is allowed to rise. While President Barack Obama promptly called China’s decision a “constructive step,” his enthusiasm is implicitly conditioned on how quickly China puts the long-sought pledge into action. It also remains to be seen whether even a freer-floating yuan will mollify the many members of the US Congress who want China penalised for what they see as unfair trade practices. Global economy

The oil spill

As the Gulf effort intensifies, cold comfort for Indians: a quarter-century on, Bhopal miscreants get two years behind bars At this writing, crude oil from the ill-fated Deepwater Horizon drilling project continues to gush into the Gulf of Mexico, destroying wildlife and livelihoods and resisting efforts to bring it under control. Feeling runs higher all the time, especially in people living along the despoiled Gulf Coast. In this context, a report from New Delhi by a New York Times correspondent made a startling departure from the general run of media coverage of the oil spill. Having canvassed local opinion on the unfolding American ecological disaster, Lydia Polgreen gave this title to her article: “Indians, Envious of US Oil Spill Response, Seethe over Bhopal.” Envious? In fact, even a cursory comparison of two disasters almost 26 years apart will show that Ms Polgreen got it right. Consider her summing-up on the leak of methyl isocyanate gas at a chemical plant run by a subsidiary of Union Carbide Corp (Houston, Texas) in Bhopal, central India, in 1984: [It] killed thousands, injured tens of thousands more, and left a major city with a toxic waste dump at its heart. The company walked away after paying a $470 million settlement. The company’s American chief executive, arrested while in India, skipped bail, never to return. This month (June 2010), eight former senior officials from the company, including one who has since died, were convicted of negligence, but the sentence — two years in jail — seems paltry to many [in Delhi] compared to the impact of their crime. India had sought $3.3 billion in damages from Union Carbide but settled for less than half a billion dollars. The charge of culpable homicide brought against the senior officials was reduced by the Supreme Court of India to a count, according to the Times , “most often used against reckless drivers in car accidents.” The court also fined the seven surviving defendants $2,100 each. In contrast, rig operator BP has acceded to Washington’s promptings to set up a $20 billion fund for cleaning up the Gulf, as a first instalment on what it will ultimately pay for the damage caused by the oil spill. A criminal investigation has begun. As noted by the Times , while the environmental toll in the Gulf is huge, the cost in human lives, vis-à-vis Bhopal, has been minimal. Thus, Ms Polgreen noted, however haltingly the US oil containment effort goes forward now, “Indians cannot help but marvel at – and envy – the alacrity with which the United States government has acted.” In late June, around the time that the Union Carbide ❖ ❖ defendants were sentenced in India for their negligence in the Bhopal disaster, the New York Times ran a primer on the cap-and-capture effort in the Gulf. An abstract follows:

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Wire & Cable ASIA – September/October 2010