The Economist:

BP’s woes may also reflect badly on other British firms doing business in America. Since April some parts of the press have taken to calling the firm British Petroleum to stress Britain’s role in the disaster, even though the company rebranded to become BP in 2001.

Why not go all the way and stress that America was once at war with Great Britain.

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...

15 replies on “American Press Stressing that BP Is a British Company”

  4. Also for the record The Economist is a British magazine. I mean we are doing stress on all things British.

  7. Only idiots would be angry at Britain. It is our policies, our desire for oil, our unwillingness to give an inch over the idea that our lifestyle requires ever huger quantities of oil to maintain, no matter what, no questions asked.

    Here’s some statistics from 2007:

    # 1 United States: 20,680,000 bbl/day
    # 3 China: 7,578,000 bbl/day
    # 4 Japan: 5,007,000 bbl/day
    # 5 Russia: 2,858,000 bbl/day
    # 6 India: 2,722,000 bbl/day
    # 7 Germany: 2,456,000 bbl/day
    # 8 Brazil: 2,372,000 bbl/day
    # 9 Canada: 2,371,000 bbl/day
    # 10 Saudi Arabia: 2,311,000 bbl/

    Golly, who isn’t even in the top ten!?

  8. I thought we were at war with the same people that Captain Jack Sparrow despised, who wanted to own Davy Jones’ heart so they could unleash the Kraken on American shipping?

    Or did I miss something about who pillaged India?

  9. @7 – yeah, but we’re 37th for Net speeds worldwide.

    Got to do something to make up for Slovenia, Romania, and Bulgaria being better than us.

  10. Hating on the British because of a company that used to use it in their name is completely stupid.

    BP (or British Petrolium if you prefer), was the most egregious violator, but they were still operating under the rules that our government set for offshore drilling. None of the other oil companies have any better plan for dealing with a massive spill.

    All big international companies behave differently in different countries, depending on the regulation climate. Drilling in the North Sea or off the coasts of Europe has much stricter regulation. Drilling in most of Africa has almost no real regulation at all (or no enforcement even if there are rules). So you never hear of serious oil leaks in European waters, and all of the oil companies are doing massive environmental damage in Africa.

    Yes, BP is mostly to blame for this mess. But our government shares at least a small part of the blame for having very lax regulation and little oversight for drilling in the gulf. This could have happened to any oil company out there. BP just lost this bet this time.

  11. Respect the rebranding! It’s “Z” now, not Blackwater… I mean.. no, wait that’s perfect! Now that Blackwater is Z, B.P. can be Blackwater.

  12. @10: It’s like when people bashed (British-owned) French’s Mustard after France wouldn’t join the Coalition of the Willing.

    @11: Blackwater is now “Xe”, OuterCow. But “Blackwater” would be a very fitting descriptor of the mess BP has caused.

  13. What parts? Their chart alleges 8% of US publications referred to BP as “British Petroleum” but searching NY Times, Fox News, Denver Post, WSJ, MSNBC, and CNN revealed nothing but the news calling BP “BP.”

    If they’re trolling backwater TV station news pages for this, they’re skewing their sample. They should restrict it to news organizations that are actually read/viewed by lots of people, that is, ones everyone has at least heard of.

  14. No one at all is fucking hating on the british. British Petroleum is a terrible company. Their rebrand is irrelevant, these stories are self-indulgently stupid. Fuck the media.

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