Wednesday, June 02, 2010

Oil, Oil, Oil

With the BP oil still pouring out into the Gulf of Mexico, Americans are just becoming aware of BP's safety record. Rachel Maddow mentioned this on her program last night on MSNBC.

The stockmasters:
Did you know that BP Plc (NYSE:BP) has 760 OSHA violations while competitor Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) only had one?
How is BP even allowed to operate? Remember the big Alaskan pipeline debacle in 2007? That was BP. Or what about the refinery that blew up in 2005? BP once again. And the worst part is, they were fined $86 million for not fixing the problem that caused the 2005 refinery disaster.....
....In the last five years, investigators found, BP has admitted to breaking U.S. environmental and safety laws and committing outright fraud. BP paid $373 million in fines to avoid prosecution....

What a mess!

President Obama is moving forward with a great idea---take away tax breaks for oil companies.

WMBF.com:
President Barack Obama says it's time to roll back "billions of dollars in tax breaks" for oil companies and use the money for clean energy research and development.

Obama made the comments Wednesday in prepared remarks for a speech at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

He said the catastrophic Gulf oil spill shows the country must move toward clean energy by embracing energy efficiency, tapping natural gas and nuclear power and eliminating tax breaks for big oil....

I agree. Why should oil companies get tax breaks, especially when they are endangering their employees and our environment? While they make billions and billions of dollars in profits, they continue to thumb their noses at regulations and safety rules. It is time that we get these oil companies to shape up.

While other countries around the world have progressed in using other types of energy, our nation has been using the same fossil fuels without trying to do things better. We need to move forward and away from the dangerous and dirty fossil fuels.