This spill has caused BP the best part of a years worth of profits, so fuel prices are going to rocket up even more.
It is appalling that we as the consumers are ending up to foot the bill for their mistakes. Maybe we should boycott BP - that has helped a few years ago with Shell when they wanted to sink a defunct platform in the North Sea. They had to give in and properly disassemble it.
Hi there.
I remember the Furore about that problem -- in fact the ORIGINAL Idea Shell had of allowing the platform to just sink into the North Sea turned out in the end to be by far the best solution of all - (other than those ideas of not having any exploration of the North Sea whatsoever).
Gasoline (Petrol) costs are HUGELY exacerbated by the TAX governments add on to it.
In the UK SHELL are actually one of the largest supplier of SANDWICHES in the UK due to thier HUGE network of Gasoline / Service stations -- selling Gasoline isn't actually that profitable for most Oil Companies in Europe due to the almost unbelievably high taxes on it.
If we really stopped using Gasoline at the moment a HUGE amount of Government revenue would dry up immediately -- where would the replacement come from.
I'm not going to turn this thread into an argument about supplying people with funds for Social Services, Education, Health services and the like -- but just to remind people that fuel taxes are a HUGE amount of any governments income without which a Country would just have to shut up shop on almost any public service.
As I've re-iterated in this thread we DO need to find alternatives to OIL but its NOT going to happen any time soon.
Anybody who thinks the solution is to tax the Oil Companies out of existence is just living in Cloud Cuckoo Land.
BP actually isn't the culprit here -- the REAL culprit is the "Out sourcing" culture that pervades modern businesses -- as I'm sure thousands of you guys currently working in the IT industry realize only too well. Businesses should run their CORE businesses themselves.
Had BP been operating the rig itself I'm 99.999999% sure this disaster wouldn't have happened.
Using a 3rd party outsourced solution shows what can happen when using a "cheaper" alternative.
Loads of customers having to deal with Off shored Indian Call Centres and "IT service" centres know EXACTLY what I mean here -- Not only is the customer service experience radically worsened but the cost savings aren't realised either.
Cheers
jimbo