The answer is unfortunately yes.
When this oil spill happened, I was too young and uninterested to undersatand what this oil spill did to the world, and it passed without me knowing. Apparently it also passed over the heads of people within the same bussiness.
Last year the company British Petroleum, otherwise know as BP, told the United states government that it was capable of cleaning 300,000 barrels of oil from a spill in a day. On April 20, 2010 The oil drilling rig Deepwater Horizon malfunctioned casusing a estimated 4.9 million barrels of oil to be released to date. Given that we have yet to finish the clean-up, and with their eariler pridictions even if they had only started the clean up today they would be done in a little over sixteen days. It has now been almost half a year and they have yet to fix the problem. And the saddest part of it is that BP is only recently admitting its mistakes.
With this assignment, I hope to show the class BP's carelessness and unprepared ways and inform them of the consequences that followed.
Other sources:
Ooh, fresh wound! This speech should draw up some emotions. Excellent picture. There was another rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico a few days ago--how's that for history repeating itself!?
ReplyDeleteMy point exactly, we aren't even funding the saftey procedures correctly; let alone the clean up.
ReplyDeleteThis one hits close to my first AND second homes -- Ecuador and the US.
ReplyDeleteEcuador sued Chevron in the early 1990s for the damages to nature and the people in the Amazon caused by oil pipe spills and oil mismanagement. The suit is still ongoing. To make a long story short, it's ridiculous. What is most upsetting thing to me is Chevron's use of communication channels to control messaging about the situation and portray their side of the issue in pretty selfish and inhumane ways. The problem is that Ecuador doesn't have a grasp on good crisis communication, thus can't properly represent itself in the media -- both national and global. So has BP tried to control the messaging of the current situation. The difference is that enough Americans have access to open communication channels to expose BP... I'm glad your speech is making use of those channels (this blog, your voice) to inform an audience about the issue.
In terms of the assignment, however, please make sure you stick to facts and are as objective as possible -- a challenge I'm sure you will be able to take on.
For your persuasive speech later in the semester, feel free to build upon this speech and comment on how this topic affects society.
I just read the first interview with the person behind Twitter's @BPGlobalPR account -- a fake account created to mock / expose BP and their efforts to mask the truth of what has been happening in the Gulf.
ReplyDeleteThought you'd be interested
http://www.theawl.com/2010/09/josh-simpson-the-man-behind-bp-global-pr