9/11 families furious as Obama compares BP oil spill to Twin Towers attack
June 14th, 2010
9/11 families furious as Obama compares BP oil spill to Twin Towers attack
Published on June 14th, 2010 @ 09:54:16 pm , using 1540 words
Mail Online UK
By Daniel Bates
Last updated at 11:33 PM on 14th June 2010
- Shares plummet by 9% wiping £7billion off firm's value
- Obama again ignores U.S. firms whose faults led to spill
- Cameron still not made statement supporting BP
British families of 9/11 victims described Barack Obama as ‘cruel’ yesterday for comparing the terrorist outrage to the BP oil spill.
The U.S. president said there were ‘echoes’ between the Gulf of Mexico disaster and the Al Qaeda suicide attacks which killed 2,995 people, including 67 Britons.
He said that just as the events of September 11, 2001, had profoundly shaped ‘our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy’, so the oil disaster would shape thinking on the environment and energy for years to come.
Those who lost loved ones when terrorists flew hijacked planes into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Centre said Mr Obama’s remarks were yet another attempt to slur the UK.
Hazardous: Haley Farris (left) watches as her friend Amy Rivera steps over a pool of oil on a beach in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on Saturday. The White House is continued its attacks on BP over the weekend
Environmental hot potato: Bridget Hood (left) and Emily Davis hold a sign demanding action during a protest under the Perdido Pass bridge in Orange Beach, Alabama, yesterday
Joy Bennett, 66, a mother of two from Amersham in Buckinghamshire whose son Oli, a 29-year-old financial journalist, died, said: ‘It is an unfair parallel and is really a cruel thing to say.
‘I can see what he is trying to say but to compare a manmade deliberate terrorist attack to something that is an accident is absolutely wrong. Mr Obama seems intent on causing as much offence to Britain as possible.
‘By saying this he is distracting from what his government is doing, or not doing enough of.’
Charles Berkeley from Shrewsbury, who lost his 37-year-old son Graham, an IT consultant, on 9/11, added: ‘I don’t think it is a fair parallel and I can understand why people feel aggrieved.’
Further criticism came from America. Ed Kowalski, of the U.S-based 9/11 Families for a Secure America Foundation, said: ‘It is a very cheap attempt to draw attention away from himself. He is desperate to be able to pull attention away from his failings.’
Crude oil from washes ashore in Orange Beach, Alabama, where swimming is banned
Former New York Fire Department Chief Jim Riches, who lost a son on 9/11, said: ‘I think he’s off-base.
'These were terrorist attacks, these 9/11 murders, not something caused by people trying to make money.’
And Jack Lynch, the father of a fireman who died, said: ‘To compare an environmental accident, if that’s what you call it, to a premeditated terrorist attack is ridiculous.’
Relations between London and Washington have cooled because of Mr Obama’s anti-British rhetoric over the oil spill, forcing him to phone David Cameron to reassure him of his support.
The president has been under increasing pressure over his handling of the disaster and is this week attempting to prove he is in control of events. He visited Louisiana, the hardest-hit state, for the fourth time in recent weeks yesterday and will address the American people tonight.
BP executives will give evidence to Congress today, while chief executive Tony Hayward has been summoned to the White House tomorrow and will testify on Capitol Hill on Thursday.
With his relentless criticism of BP, Mr Obama has been accused of threatening British pensions – which are heavily invested in the company – and the UK economy.
Energy Secretary Chris Huhne finally hit back yesterday, breaking days of public silence from the Government.
Controlled burn: Smoke billows as spilled oil is set alight off the Louisiana coast
He emphasised that a string of U.S. firms were also heavily involved in the events leading up to the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig and said BP, which Mr Obama has pointedly referred to as British Petroleum, was ‘effectively an Anglo-American company’.
In a coded criticism of the president, he warned: ‘I think we have seen what can happen if people attempt to flam up the rhetoric on this.’
BP is now collecting around 15,000 barrels of oil per day but the equivalent of 35,000 is still escaping and may not be stopped until August when relief wells are completed.
Shares in the company plummeted 9.3 per cent on the FTSE index yesterday as the BP board decides whether to suspend its hefty dividend because of the spill.
The shares, which were down ten per cent at one stage, wiped more than £6.5billion off the stock value of the firm - as nervous investors headed for the exit.
Incomparable: The Twin Towers being attacked
BP stock has been especially volatile over the past week. It dropped to a 14-year low on Wednesday, only to rebound on Thursday and Friday.
The firm has a number of options regarding dividend payments. Analysts believe the company is unlikely to scrap it altogether. It can also defer it, pay it into shares or put it into an escrow account.
BP said it would not make a statement on dividend payments following today's board meeting.
Along with the ecological fallout, relations with Britain have come under strain amid President Obama's belligerent rhetoric towards BP which led him to phone Prime Minister David Cameron and assure him that BP, and not Britain in general, was to blame.
Mr Obama compared 9/11 to the disaster in an interview with the respected US political website Politico.
'In the same way that our view of our vulnerabilities and our foreign policy was shaped profoundly by 9/11,' he said, 'I think this disaster is going to shape how we think about the environment and energy for many years to come.'
In a sign he will use the catastrophe to push for energy and climate change reform, he vowed to 'move forward in a bold way in a direction that finally gives us the kind of future-oriented… visionary energy policy that we so vitally need and has been absent for so long.
'One of the biggest leadership challenges for me going forward is going to be to make sure that we draw the right lessons from this disaster,' he said.
Mr Obama said he did not know if America would shift from an oil-based economy in his lifetime however he added that now was the time to 'start making that transition'.
'What we can predict is that the availability of fossil fuel is going to be diminishing; that it's going to get more expensive to recover; that there are going to be environmental costs that our children… our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren are going to have to bear,' he said.
The Transocean Discoverer Enterprise drill ship (with flare) collects oil from over the site of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil well alongside support ships and relief wells as workers try to stem the flow yesterday
Smoothing it over: David Cameron was assured by Barack Obama that his scathing comments about 'British Petroleum' had 'nothing to do with national identity'
Not all the 9/11 families said Mr Obama's comments were upsetting.
Sally Regenhard, who lost a son, said: 'Just like on 9/11, there were no plans for emergency preparedness, coordination of response.
'It's a failure of the system and the government. I'm not offended by the comment.'
BP HIT FOR £7BN OVER DIVIDEND FEARS
Nearly £7billion was wiped off the value of BP yesterday amid growing fears that its crucial dividend payout to shareholders will be suspended.
The shares fell 9.3 per cent, with City analysts warning that they will fall even lower in the coming weeks.
Since the oil rig explosion in April, the market capitalisation of the company has almost halved, losing about £55billion in value.
The BP board met in London to discuss whether or not to pay a dividend, which Barack Obama has put the company under
pressure to scrap in favour of refunding victims of the oil spill. Yesterday a BP spokesman said the company would not be revealing the outcome of the crucial meeting.
But scrapping the dividend would hit, in particular, elderly investors who rely on the income.
Last year, BP handed out around £7billion, paying £1 in every £7 of dividends paid out by companies in the FTSE 100.
BP said it had so far spent around £1billion on its ‘response’ to the disaster, but it was ‘too early to quantify other potential costs and liabilities associated with the incident’.
More than 50,000 claims have been submitted to BP, which has repeatedly insisted that it promises to meet every legitimate one.
To date, it has paid out £42million to more than 26,500 claimants, which is equal to nearly £1,600 each.
Rival oil giant Chevron told the Wall Street Journal that the Gulf of Mexico explosion was a ‘preventable’ incident.
Chief executive John Watson said his company had policies and procedures in place that could have avoided the explosion that triggered the spill.
Permalink
Comment feed for this post
