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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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Topic Author's Original Post - Jul 7, 2010 - 10:27am PT
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Here is an interesting read on the "History" of BP. If this is "Capitalism" then we are truly slaves to the Corporation/govt model that rules the world..
Wake up people to the mess that greed brings..
BP in the Gulf -- The Persian Gulf
How an Oil Company Helped Destroy Democracy in Iran
By Stephen Kinzer
To frustrated Americans who have begun boycotting BP: Welcome to the club. It's great not to be the only member any more!
Does boycotting BP really make sense? Perhaps not. After all, many BP filling stations are actually owned by local people, not the corporation itself. Besides, when you're filling up at a Shell or ExxonMobil station, it's hard to feel much sense of moral triumph. Nonetheless, I reserve my right to drive by BP stations. I started doing it long before this year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
My decision not to give this company my business came after I learned about its role in another kind of “spill” entirely -- the destruction of Iran's democracy more than half a century ago.
The history of the company we now call BP has, over the last 100 years, traced the arc of transnational capitalism. Its roots lie in the early years of the twentieth century when a wealthy bon vivant named William Knox D'Arcy decided, with encouragement from the British government, to begin looking for oil in Iran. He struck a concession agreement with the dissolute Iranian monarchy, using the proven expedient of bribing the three Iranians negotiating with him.
Under this contract, which he designed, D'Arcy was to own whatever oil he found in Iran and pay the government just 16% of any profits he made -- never allowing any Iranian to review his accounting. After his first strike in 1908, he became sole owner of the entire ocean of oil that lies beneath Iran's soil. No one else was allowed to drill for, refine, extract, or sell “Iranian” oil.
”Fortune brought us a prize from fairyland beyond our wildest dreams,” Winston Churchill, who became First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911, wrote later. “Mastery itself was the prize of the venture.”
Soon afterward, the British government bought the D'Arcy concession, which it named the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. It then built the world's biggest refinery at the port of Abadan on the Persian Gulf. From the 1920s into the 1940s, Britain's standard of living was supported by oil from Iran. British cars, trucks, and buses ran on cheap Iranian oil. Factories throughout Britain were fueled by oil from Iran. The Royal Navy, which projected British power all over the world, powered its ships with Iranian oil.
After World War II, the winds of nationalism and anti-colonialism blew through the developing world. In Iran, nationalism meant one thing: we’ve got to take back our oil. Driven by this passion, Parliament voted on April 28, 1951, to choose its most passionate champion of oil nationalization, Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister. Days later, it unanimously approved his bill nationalizing the oil company. Mossadegh promised that, henceforth, oil profits would be used to develop Iran, not enrich Britain.
This oil company was the most lucrative British enterprise anywhere on the planet. To the British, nationalization seemed, at first, like some kind of immense joke, a step so absurdly contrary to the unwritten rules of the world that it could hardly be real. Early in this confrontation, the directors of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and their partners in Britain's government settled on their strategy: no mediation, no compromise, no acceptance of nationalization in any form.
The British took a series of steps meant to push Mossadegh off his nationalist path.
They withdrew their technicians from Abadan, blockaded the port, cut off exports of vital goods to Iran, froze the country’s hard-currency accounts in British banks, and tried to win anti-Iran resolutions from the U.N. and the World Court. This campaign only intensified Iranian determination. Finally, the British turned to Washington and asked for a favor: please overthrow this madman for us so we can have our oil company back.
American President Dwight D. Eisenhower, encouraged by his Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, a lifelong defender of transnational corporate power, agreed to send the Central Intelligence Agency in to depose Mossadegh. The operation took less than a month in the summer of 1953. It was the first time the CIA had ever overthrown a government.
At first, this seemed like a remarkably successful covert operation. The West had deposed a leader it didn't like, and replaced him with someone who would perform as bidden -- Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
From the perspective of history, though, it is clear that Operation Ajax, as the operation was code-named, had devastating effects. It not only brought down Mossadegh's government, but ended democracy in Iran. It returned the Shah to his Peacock Throne. His increasing repression set off the explosion of the late 1970s, which brought to power Ayatollah Khomeini and the bitterly anti-Western regime that has been in control ever since.
The oil company re-branded itself as British Petroleum, BP Amoco, and then, in 2000, BP. During its decades in Iran, it had operated as it pleased, with little regard for the interests of local people. This corporate tradition has evidently remained strong.
Many Americans are outraged by the relentless images of oil gushing into Gulf waters from the Deepwater Horizon well, and by the corporate recklessness that allowed this spill to happen. Those who know Iranian history have been less surprised.
Stephen Kinzer is a veteran foreign correspondent and the author of Bitter Fruit and Overthrow, among other works. His newest book is Reset: Iran, Turkey, and America's Future.
Copyright 2010 Stephen Kinzer
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426
climber
Buzzard Point, TN
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...prettt removed from the classical (naif) model of Adam Smith capitalism relying on "sympathy to your fellow man" to regulate markets....also Greenspan's take. Worked really well for a tiny %....
No wonder Churchill advocated gassing the "uncivilized tribes"...hey, just like Saddam!
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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...sounds like "bitch bitch bitch" to me. 50 years of cheap gas for your parents and yourselves and all I hear is "bitch bitch bitch"
You guys send a thank you note yet? It's not too late.
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WBraun
climber
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The root desire for maintaining the comfort of the material body created all this.
In a nutshell it's really not BP or anything else but your own self that originally created all these nightmares upon you.
We create the world.
The finger, due to the illusionary energy, always points outside of oneself .....
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Ricardo Cabeza
climber
All Over.
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Couchstuffer,
Here's the thing; there are so many like myself who would have liked to grow up in a world that wasn't fouled, both politically, economically, and environmentally by oil.
We chose the easy way out, oil. What about the hard way, where we develop other means of producing power? The money still flows, just not towards gasoline and diesel.
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WandaFuca
Social climber
From the gettin place
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couchmaster said,
50 years of cheap gas for your parents and yourselves
Yeah, if the only cost was at the pump.
All I hear from you is bah bah bah, like a good corporate sheeple.
What if all the externalized costs--subsidies, environmental damage, war, medical payments, etc.--were part of the bill???
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Check out Kinzer's book "All the Shah's Men"
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rmsusa
Trad climber
Boulder
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Ricardo
We don't get to choose the world we were born in. We just have to deal with reality. Our oil economy came about as a result of hard work and toil over a century to provide us all with mobility. It was far from easy. Ever read stories about the beginning of it? When it started, we moved around with coal. Ever ridden a steam locomotive? Liquid petroleum is soooo much cleaner. Now we've got alternatives coming along and they'll happen when a majority of us decide they're good enough to do what we want. Every generation contributes a bit and we get better at things decade by decade.
Wanda
What if all the indirect benefits were included in the equation. The interstate highway system, arguably, did more to advance the material well-being of americans than any other single work this century. Airports run a close second. I don't think it's as clear cut as you suggest.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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One of the better books on the history of the oil and petroleum industries, with lots on the origins and evolution of BP, is Daniel Yergin's "The Prize". Unfortunately it only goes to the early 1980s, but it's very helpful. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Yergin
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Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
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a related book i recently read is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessions_of_an_Economic_Hit_Man
while i thought there was some extremism in the book, there were way too many facts and nice conincidences not to be taken seriously.
it is a quick read and pretty darn interesting about the invovlement of corporate USA dealing dealing with other natural resource rich contries. pretty disturbing.
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Tony Bird
climber
Northridge, CA
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the story of mossadegh is one every american should hear, but it's only partly told here.
the cia operative sent to depose this fellow was none other than kermit roosevelt, nephew of teddy roosevelt, the great icon of by-jingo out-west rough-riding americanism, they say the most popular president we ever had, but his heyday didn't last too long, lest the public begin to feel it were in control.
kermit pioneered the great technique of hiring street mobs to demonstrate. poor mossy was outa there in no time. then came the reimposition of the unpopular shah. then came the predictable hard-core muslim reaction.
what breaks my heart is the picture mossadegh had taken of himself on a visit to new york, at the foot of our statue of liberty, believing the dream.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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The Shah should have been more benevolent in his power and profit sharing.
Or he should have treated his Praetorian Guard better and pre-empted the current masters' use of subsidized street militias/vigilantes. You have to have a good network of informers and enforcers at the grass roots level.
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Branscomb
Trad climber
Lander, WY
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You should see what the SOBs did to Wyoming, specifically around Pinedale. When they were drilling heavy out there, the smog and dust layer in the summer was above 12,000 ft. They had some of the highest recorded ozone levels in Pinedale ever seen in the US these last two winters. People werte getting headaches like crazy. BP just held some town meetings and made a lot of promises about solving the problem, with no apparent real effort to do so. During the years they were drilling hard, the dust and off gassing drifted all the way over the Winds into Fremont County. Usually the air in Wyoming is crystal clear in the winter. You couldn't even see the water tower in Arapahoe 20 miles from Lander for the haze. Several times when it snowed here, there was a fine gray dust in the snow. Now that the price of natural gas is so low that they can't make a profit on shipment out of the state, the air is in way better shape, but they've driven all the antelope and deer off the range out there. I would say that BLM should be chain whipped for their complicity in BP's destruction of the environment. They handed out drilling permits with no review and their environmental impact statements are a sick joke. As soon as the price of gas gets back up, the bastards will be at it again, you can bet. Just like that movie Avatar, they are only responsible to their shareholders who only care about the profits. They could care less about anything besides money.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Is BP stock a good buy now (at about $33.00)?
Seems like the market punished it more than warranted, and from I can tell from this thread, it's got good long term management skills.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I have a hard time believing BP is any worse than any of the others.
When I worked at Prudhoe Bay in the early 80's they had a good rep. But
was that due to their doing, state scrutiny, or knowing the Sierra Club
was watching them like a hawk? I don't know but I can tell you Prudhoe Bay
was a model of cleanliness.
I suspect Wyoming was a bit more lax in their oversight.
As for the Gulf there is no doubt the federal retards are/were
both lax and inept and it starts in congress. The Democrats howling for
blood now are certainly complicit in dereliction of duty.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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(history does not lie...)
But historians do,
and "journalists" usually are.
(often out of ignorance, not intent)
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dirtbag
climber
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Thank you BP for wrecking the Gulf.
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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 8, 2010 - 01:30pm PT
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i think folks are missing the point. UK govt asked CIA to "intervene" and over throw a govt that was going against the "wishes" of BP/UK govt.
now a contact is a contract but really, how long will we keep the wool over our eyes on the past aggressions we have under taken for resources and control of power?
CUBA< Phillipines, Central and South America, Persian Gulf...
this "hole in the gulf" is just another rape of our resources at the expense of the bottom line..
i think all these leases in gulf and us soil should be renegotiated and the royalist directly tied to safety and eco performance. the better your safety record, the better your cut..
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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connect the dots...
Where it all started...discovery of large reserves of oil.
Here are a few of the characters...
Mossaddegh: democratically elected leader in 1951 who wanted to nationalize the oil industry in Iran so that they could share 50/50 in oil profits with International Oil companies including the Anglo-Persian Oil Co aka British Petroleum.
Mossaddegh 1951 Time's Man of the Year
The coup designers (Operation AJAX)
Churchill & British intelligence officer
John Foster Dulles, secretary of State, one of the main forces behind the coup in D.C.
Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore Roosevelt, who was the man on the ground who helped organize and coordinate the coup
Mr. Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA. All credit or blame is his to keep. Striking resemblance to the Secretary of State at the time...they were brothers.
Major General Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf organized security forces he trained to support the Shah (Gulf War I Stormin' Norman's father)
Ashraf Pahlavi, the Shah's twin sister, one of the main characters behind the coup. She has many adjectives to her credit, none of them are proper enough to write.
His majesty (Shah) had the bad habit of chickening out under the fire. This was not the first time he abandoned his supporter and left the country. This was a very unusual behavior for a king. They just don't do that. He went to Rome. He was so scared of the peasants chasing him during the escape that his wife left one of her shoes on the tarmac. The first day was glorious. The government was under the illusion that it had neutralized the shah's coup attempt. However things got worse.
1979 Iranian revolution
Sept 11, 2001
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Jul 13, 2010 - 08:29pm PT
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BumP
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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 14, 2010 - 08:37am PT
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T tradster, good link of images to back up the story.
So the question is: at what point do we as a country come to accept our actions over the last 150 years to secure our power base and resources?
What ever happened to buying what we need on the "open" market vs securing it via WAR. Case in point is the "discovery" recently that Afghanistan has billions of rare metals etc?
I'm sure Bush and CO had NO IDEA THAT WAS THERE BEFORE The attack on us on 9/11...
Call me a patriot, call me a hypocrite, call me a democrat, just don't call me shirley..
Food for thought..
KS
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Tobia
Social climber
GA
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Jul 14, 2010 - 09:15am PT
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I was hoping to upload a pdf file titled "50 Years of Oil Drilling" but can't figure out how to do so... meanwhile I took a screen shot of one of the pictures.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Jul 14, 2010 - 04:35pm PT
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Operation Ajax is just 1 of many episodes where US covert operations were used for regime change because the leader of a foreign country committed an unforgivable sin, namely Nationalization of an industry that was considered vital to US commercial interests. For examople, the overthrow of Allende in Chile after he threatened to nationalize the copper industry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_nationalization_of_copper
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R7MNnoYktM
With US help, Allende was replaced by this thug Pinochet...
...General Augusto Pinochet deposed Allende in a U.S.-backed coup d'état on September 11, 1973 and this ended the Popular Unity government.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Jul 14, 2010 - 05:12pm PT
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Fatty wrote
Perhaps BP should have had a more generous profit sharing model with the people of Iran, but a contract is a contract.
Maybe you missed the part where it was written
He struck a concession agreement with the dissolute Iranian monarchy, using the proven expedient of bribing the three Iranians negotiating with him.
If a contract is a contract, the Native Americans probably have trillions in outstanding claims for broken contracts with the US government.
The hitman book is a good one by John Perkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perkins_(author);
His 2007 book
The Secret History of the American Empire (2007), ISBN 0-525-95015-X
Is also very good and contains an interview with an ex advisor/henchmen to the Shah whose tongue was cut-off when he stopped being corrupt and holding the line. Highly recommended.
BP sucks hard but most the big oil companies do. They continue to act as badly in Nigeria as BP did in the gulf, only nobody's watching.
peace
karl
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Jul 14, 2010 - 06:43pm PT
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According to Kinzer's "All the Shah's Men" what Mossaddegh proposed to Anglo-Persian Oil Co (aka BP) was to split oil profits 50:50. The Brits said NO WAY and started plotting Operation Ajax. If I recall correctly, Iran's split of oil profits w/BP was Iran 25:75 BP.
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SteveW
Trad climber
The state of confusion
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Jul 15, 2010 - 06:21pm PT
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Hey, it looks like the new cap might have stopped the leak!!!!!
Thank (fill in the blank). . .
Next question. . . .
Will the gulf ever recover?????
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lucaskrajnik
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jul 15, 2010 - 06:29pm PT
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woo woo! go BP!!
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tolman_paul
Trad climber
Anchorage, AK
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Jul 15, 2010 - 09:01pm PT
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As to the question about the gulf recovering, I have no doubt the environment will mostly recover of the next few decades. Honestly I think biggest effect with be socio economic. Alot of people have lost not only their jobs, but their way of life. There will be increases in alcoholism, drug abuse, suicide and domestic violence in the communities where people whose way of life will be wiped out for a generation, and they won't be able to pass on their type of work and companies to their children. So families will up and leave areas they've lived in for a long time.
Unfortunately most global resource development corporations have a history of for lack of a better term, raping and pillaging the countries they've profited from. Mining, timber, oil, precious metals and gems, agriculture, fishing, etc.
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the kid
Trad climber
fayetteville, wv
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Topic Author's Reply - Jul 16, 2010 - 08:33am PT
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extract, rape pillage..
move to the next site..
repeat...
again and again and again..
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couchmaster
climber
pdx
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Aug 21, 2012 - 12:12pm PT
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Bunch of ungrateful hypocrites. .....bitch bitch bitch. Much of the history and greatness of this country is tied to oil. Every damned one of you is the beneficiaries of it.
But all I hear is bitch bitch bitch. Have any of you stop using OIL or even just gasoline? NO? Then you're not just part of the problem. You ARE the problem. Get back to us here when you get off the petroleum train and I will bow down to your greatness.
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blahblah
Gym climber
Boulder
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Aug 21, 2012 - 02:08pm PT
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So I did buy BP in 2010 and it's turned out to be a good investment, but nothing spectacular--I got a nice bump in stock price after the panic subsided, and now it pays a healthy dividend.
But price has been pretty flat for a while; I'd call it a good market "hold" at this point--maybe worth a look if you're going for high dividends.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Aug 21, 2012 - 03:20pm PT
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The British Petroleum saga dates way back, and they were able to convince Eisenhower to join in Operation Ajax.
If you ever want to know the entire history of oil, and the numerous shenanigans such as this, go buy the book The Prize.
It is THE book that starts at day one and follows the course of money and power and its realtion to oil.
When you fill up at the gas station, the price you don't see is the military expense. We also prop up corrupt monarchies as long as they are friendly.
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Karl Baba
Trad climber
Yosemite, Ca
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Aug 21, 2012 - 03:44pm PT
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Kinda funny that we totally destroyed democracy in Iran and wonder why they might be suspicious of us. What if they did that to us?
Now we want to bomb them again just because they might be preparing a defense for themselves (even though not proved and we already wrecked one country with the same excuse)
Is there no shame if you have the power to do anything without consequence?
PEace
Karl
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zBrown
Ice climber
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The attorneys general of Alabama, Louisiana, Florida and Mississippi settled “in principle” with the fallen oil giant British Petroleum on Thursday, agreeing to accept $18.7 billion in damages after a judge deemed the company “grossly negligent” in the costliest offshore environmental accident in U.S. history.
Somehow gross negligence and accident don't mesh.
Kinda of hard to read, but in case you're wondering about BP.
Fiscal year is January-December. All values GBP millions. 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
Sales/Revenue 192.44B 234.25B 237.14B 242.55B 214.73B
Sales Growth - 21.73% 1.23% 2.28% -11.47%
Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) incl. D&A 162.96B 200.49B 214.64B 217.59B 199.34B
COGS excluding D&A 155.49B 192.9B 206.63B 208.95B 190B
Depreciation & Amortization Expense 7.47B 7.58B 8.01B 8.64B 9.34B
Depreciation 6.99B 6.72B 7.81B 8.47B 9.16B
Amortization of Intangibles 480.59M 865.84M 200.05M 170.82M 184.63M
COGS Growth - 23.03% 7.06% 1.38% -8.39%
Gross Income 29.47B 33.76B 22.5B 24.96B 15.39B
Since that ruling, however, the company has managed to lower the official spill amount by more than a million barrels. It’s also managed to shave more than seven billion off its maximum environmental fine. Thursday’s deal includes $5.9 billion to settle claims by state and local governments for economic damages they have suffered as a result of the spill. It also includes $600 million for other undisclosed claims, $700 million for long term environmental problems that scientists have yet to uncover.
But the total is still likely to come in slightly under BP’s estimate of the spill’s total cost. Plus, the payments will be made over time, not as a lump sum.
BP shares rose 2.8%
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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So are you indicating that things are looking so much brighter they gotta wear shades?
COGS went Down Down Down.
Gross Income, halved.
Shares going Up.
A pool of legal minds gets $7 billion shaved off one of the fines, too.
BASTARDS SHOULD ALL ROT IN GITMO!
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couchmaster
climber
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The book Base104 references, Daniel Yergin's seminal work, "The Prize - The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power", is world class excellent. The many nuances of this discussion really can't be covered in a few words on a web site like this, Yergins 928 pages is both readable, and thoroughly researched. I have a handful of books that I keep and periodically re-read, this is one such book.
On the plus side, American citizens have an incredibly high standard of living, a significant amount of which at it's root can be traced to our oil exploitation. On the other hand, big environmental issues which we are all too familiar with, plus Big Oils control of our banks and government can be traced through our addiction too, and exploitation of oil.
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hashbro
Trad climber
Mental Physics........
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"The root desire for maintaining the comfort of the material body created all this.
In a nutshell it's really not BP or anything else but your own self that originally created all these nightmares upon you.
We create the world.
The finger, due to the illusionary energy, always points outside of oneself ....."
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