Wednesday 28 April 2010

A greater and continuing oil scandal

The media are beginning to wake up to the probable dire effects of the explosion in an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana (see earlier posting). The worrying news today is that experts have as yet failed to cap the well. It cannot be a coincidence that the rig's operation was outsourced by BP, which has been implicated in earlier accidents in Alaska and Texas.

The Independent yesterday drew attention to an older scandal which has still not been addressed: the damage to human and natural resources, the waste of energy and the probable contribution to Earth's greenhouse gas burden, in Nigeria. The article is headed: "Visible from space, deadly on Earth: the gas flares of Nigeria", which neatly sums up an issue which is anything but neat.

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