Nearly 20 months after its massive Gulf of Mexico oil spill — and just as Americans focus on New Orleans, host of the college football championship game — BP is pushing a slick nationwide public relations campaign to persuade the US that the Gulf region has recovered.
BP PLC’s rosy picture of the Gulf, complete with sparkling beaches, booming businesses, smiling fishermen and waters bursting with seafood, seems a bit too rosy to many people who live there. Even if the British oil giant’s campaign helps promote the Gulf as a place where Americans should have no fear to visit and spend their money, some dismiss it as “BP propaganda.”
The public relations blitz is part of the company’s multibillion US dollar response to the Gulf oil spill that started after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010, killing 11 workers and leading to the release of more than 760 million liters of oil. As engineers struggled to cap the out-of-control well, it turned into the largest offshore oil spill in US history.
Now, BP is touting evidence that the Gulf’s ecology has not been severely damaged by the spill and highlighting improving -economic signs.
“I’m glad to report that all beaches and waters are open for everyone to enjoy,” BP representative Iris Cross says in one TV spot to an upbeat soundtrack. “And the economy is showing progress, with many areas on the Gulf Coast having their best tourism season in years.”
The campaign, launched just before Christmas, has ramped up for the two-week period around the Sugar Bowl and Bowl Championship Series title game scheduled to be played yesterday between Louisiana State University and Alabama.
The company is paying chefs Emeril Lagasse and John Besh to promote Gulf seafood, it has hired two seafood trucks to hand out fish tacos and seafood-filled jambalaya to the hundreds of thousands of tourists and fans pouring into the city for the football games and it is spreading its messages at galas, pre-game parties and vacation giveaways.
However, the ad campaign rings hollow to many local residents.
“They talk about areas being all open. There are areas that are still closed,” said A.C. Cooper, a shrimp fisherman in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana.
He listed some bays and fishing spots that he said the state has closed due to oil contamination.
“It’s bogus, it’s not the truth,” he said.
He added that last autumn’s shrimp harvest was dismal.
“The numbers on our shrimp are way down,” he said. “They [BP] make it sound like they’re doing a lot, but they’re not doing much to help the fishermen out ... I got good fishermen struggling to pay their bills right now.”
The head of the Louisiana Shrimp Association, a commercial shrimpers group, called it “BP propaganda.”
“When you have a lot of money, you can pretty much get any point across,” Clint Guidry said. “It’s kind of like indoctrination.”
In addition, businesses on the tourism-dependent Mississippi Gulf Coast say people are not flocking in.
For example, Bridgette Varone, head of the Gulf Coast chapter of the Mississippi Hospitality & Restaurant Association, said restaurants reported similar revenues in both 2010 and last year for the month of June, one of the busiest months.
“I wish we had better news to report,” Varone said. “We didn’t blow any socks off.”
“They might not blatantly lie in the ad, but the true story is far less shiny, and far more troubling,” said Aaron Viles of the Gulf Restoration Network, a New Orleans-based environmental group.
He said the spill might have caused a decrease in shrimp harvests and abnormalities in killifish, a minnow. He noted that oil was still marring some marshes and was buried under some beaches. He also said the US Congress had not done enough to regulate offshore drilling and assure the long-term recovery of the Gulf.
“BP needs to put these facts in their ads,” Viles said.
“They should be a little more apologetic and less triumphant,” said George Crozier, an oceanographer and former director of the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama.
However, Crozier said many others were guilty of “spin” just like BP, including scientists and environmentalists who tried, for their own reasons, to push the notion that the oil spill had devastated the Gulf.
Crozier said the spill’s effects had not been as devastating as many argued they would be.
“The beaches are people-safe, there is no doubt about that,” he said. “I thought there was a hysterical reaction to tar balls — unless we started eating them.”
BP spokesman Tom Mueller said the ad campaign was highlighting “facts,” not “anecdotes.”
“When you look at the tourism numbers, heads in beds, revenues, are generally up,” he said. “There are some exceptions, but when you step back and look at the coast as a whole, the tourism industry is recovering.”
BP’s commitment to the Gulf was sincere, he said, noting that the company set aside US$500 million for independent scientific research into the spill.
“We are honoring our commitment here in helping to promote the Gulf Coast and Gulf seafood and doing our best to help the region recover,” he said. “As Iris says in the ads, we have more work to do, and BP as a company fully recognizes that there is more work to be done.”
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was