Otra perspectiva sobre la BP y el derrame de petróleo en el golfo

La entrada es del Ludwig von Mises Institute y tiene el sugestivo título "Bashing BP (For Doing Exactly What Government Led Them to Do)" que podríamos traducir "Castigando a la BP (por hacer exactamente lo que el gobierno le empujó a hacer)"

Extracto introductorio (de situación):

"There has been tremendous criticism in the media of late regarding BP's response to the explosion and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig and the subsequent spilling of millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

An ABC news / Washington Post poll shows that 81 percent of those polled stated they thought unfavorably of the response by BP to the spill. The same poll shows that nearly two-thirds of those responding favor criminal charges against BP and other companies involved in the spill..."

Extracto de tesis:

" I want to illustrate that while BP is being bashed for the company-wide effort to contain its recent spill in the Gulf of Mexico (amidst cries for government to "DO SOMETHING!"), the spill is so difficult to deal with precisely because of government intervention in the marketplace..."

Extracto sobre los alcances de la intervención estatal en el tema:

"...the government specifically passed laws that gave the oil companies incentives to drill far offshore — that is, in deeper water where risk is presumably higher. In addition to the higher risk of accidents, the cost of solving any problems are necessarily greater in five thousand feet of water than in, say, 250 feet of water.

How much of an incentive was there to drill in deeper water? The same DOE report contains the following table.


"

Extracto sobre las consecuencias de la intervención estatal:

"It seems that it would have been downright foolish for a company to spend much effort drilling in shallow, more easily accessible regions nearer to the coastline, when by law there was a five-fold incentive for them to go out into deeper waters. Who could blame a company for trying to achieve a minimum relief volume, which would guarantee billions of dollars in royalty-free sales of petroleum and natural gas?

To see how this affected the amount of oil taken from deep waters, let's examine a second table from the same DOE report.



As is seen from this table, the production of crude oil in deep waters increased dramatically after the passage of the DWRRA in 1995. As of 2003, there was more than a 250 percent increase in the percentage of total oil produced in the deep-water regions of the gulf, with about 70 percent of all drilling taking place there.

It seems the DWRRA law was passed with precisely the intention of encouraging deep-water drilling, and it accomplished this goal. Unfortunately, accomplishing this goal led necessarily to higher risk and unintended consequences."

Extracto de implicaciones de toda esta intervención estatal:

"The problems caused by the current spilling of oil into the Gulf of Mexico will certainly have tremendous impact on the residents of the coastal states, on the fishermen, on the beaches and wildlife, and not least of all on BP as a company. There are some who think BP may end up in bankruptcy. In the meantime, it seems the company is doing quite a bit to make good on promises to clean up the problem and to take care of damages.
"Congress and big oil companies colluded to reward risky behavior and lost their bet."

Stepping back from all this and taking a look from a free-market perspective, it is clear that the incentives put in place by the state — undoubtedly at the behest of lobbyists for oil companies — led to drilling in deep water, leading to increased risk. The incentives encouraged drilling in water that had been previously deemed economically unattractive by those same companies..."

Y extracto de la entonces conveniente, para el ESTADO, conclusión que el desastre justifica:

"Predictably, in response to the mess, there have been calls for more and tighter regulation on the industry. President Obama recently said he is interested in finding out who deserves punishment for the crime of the oil spill. (Maybe he can blame Congress?) Also predictably, there is scarcely a mention of the role of government intervention in the mess in any of the traditional state media. Instead, there is the standard demonizing of "unfettered capitalism" and the cries about the failure of the free market. Barely a mention is made that safety on drilling platforms has been under the purview of government regulators within the US Minerals Management Service and that the Deepwater Horizon was deemed a model for industry safety just last year.

In a free market, where BP would bear full responsibility for damages caused by its operations, there might not be such a mess to deal with in the gulf. Additionally, private insurers for BP would not have allowed for such a shoddy inspection record on the safety of a very complicated and difficult operation. Drilling far out in the ocean waters would likely have been pursued in some form, but with the companies bearing all the risk — and certainly not being rewarded for taking economically unsound actions — there would have been far less activity in deep waters..."

¡Qué desastre (el haber tenido que tener alguna vez y por tanto tener ahora, ESTADO - por supuesto)!