Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Debate between Chris Huhne and Ian Paisley
Chris Huhne
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion. I have to say that some of the reporting back that I have heard from the United States suggests that another British voice turning up on television screens might not, at this stage of the game, have quite the effect that he suggests. As he has probably seen in the press, BP’s efforts are now being directed by one of its American executive directors. We do not want any element of national identity to creep into the issue. BP is, as I have said, effectively an Anglo-American company. It was, after all, previously BP Amoco, and Amoco was an American oil company. It is important that any television viewer in the United States realises that BP will go on playing a very important part in the economy of the US, and the UK, for many years to come.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Congratulations to you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement and for bringing some calmness to the rather choppy waters of the last week. On the conversation that took place between the Prime Minister of this country and the President of the United States, was there any recognition, on the American side of the conversation, that deep-water drilling is partially a direct result of America’s insatiable demand for more and more oil, or that the commentary against BP was doing intolerable damage to a company here, and was grossly unfair? Was there recognition that, in the parlance of Northern Ireland, the Americans should wind their neck in and recognise that such comments are doing damage to our companies?
Chris Huhne
The hon. Gentleman has to understand what would happen in this country if there were an oil spill off the coast of Northern Ireland on the scale of that at Deepwater Horizon. He would be among the first to insist that we did everything that we could to stop it. It would be an absolutely enormous environmental disaster. Let me put the scale of the oil spill in some sort of perspective. I tried a comparison with Exxon Valdez, but we might think back to our experience with Piper Alpha. The situation was not exactly the same, because the problem was largely a gas well, but in Piper Alpha’s case, we were looking at 200 barrels of oil escaping a day. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, the latest estimate is 40,000 to 50,000 barrels a day. Given the sheer scale of the problem, we fellow politicians have to understand what our reaction would be if that were going on in our waters.