by Robert King

Created on: July 12, 2010

With millions of gallons of crude oil and methane still gushing up from the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico, it may be said without any exaggeration that the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon oil-drilling platform has been a monumental catastrophe. But unlike natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes, the British Petroleum disaster could have been avoided. It is not a natural disaster. It is a manmade catastrophe. 

The facts are coming out. A survivor of the fiery explosion of the rig has recently told 60 Minutes that the crew was under tremendous pressure to get the hole drilled so that the rig could start producing. It was costing British Petroleum approximately $1 million a day. But in their haste an operator error damaged the shutoff valve that could have prevented catastrophic blowout that is fouling the turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The shutoff valve could have and should have been repaired, but it was not. No doubt because they were running behind schedule and had already sunk one failed well, a corporate decision was made and the shutoff valve failure was ignored.

Ironically, British Petroleum officials had landed on the rig the day of the explosion to commend the crew for having worked so long without a significant accident or injury.

This is not to say that British Petroleum is the only company that puts profits before all else. They are not. The share-holder-value mentality has become all-pervasive, due to the Wall Street culture that has increasing come to dominate society. 

I should imagine that Goldman Sachs has probably welcomed the British Petroleum disaster because it has shifted the spotlight off of their unseemly business dealings. And a few weeks before Goldman Sachs’ greed and avarice was front-page news it was Massey energy, which ignored government citation-after-citation for safety failures, leading to one of the worst mine disasters in recent years that took the lives of 28 miners. Before that it was AIG and Country Wide Mortgage. The list goes on. Does anyone even remember Ken Lay and Enron and how their floor traders were high-fiving each other for having run up the deregulated price of utilities and driven California to the brink of bankruptcy, from which it has never recovered?

What does any of this have to do with the kingdom of God?

The tragedy in the Gulf was brought about by human error, greed and folly and it is the people, birds, fish sea mammals and reptiles that will

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