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Your support makes all the difference.Dangerously high crude prices, uncertainty in the Middle East and strikes in Venezuela have not helped perceptions of the oil sector. The industry desperately needs a squeaky-clean ambassador, but over the past week it had to make do with BP.
BP's latest fall from grace is exactly what Britain's biggest oil company didn't need, and its shares have taken the punishment for that. It disappointed the City last year with a series of grim warnings that it would not meet targets. Now it has angered another of its old sparring partners – the environment lobby.
The problem centres on the company's activities in Alaska, and an industrial accident that has brought oil safety to the top of everyone's agenda. Drilling in Alaska is a thorny enough issue on its own, but suggestions that BP did not adopt adequate safety measures – backed up by evidence from the company's own internal reports – have made matters far worse. And BP is probably just the first of many oil companies that could come badly unstuck in the region. The US giants ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips are both eyeing Alaska hungrily.
The Alaska issue has been a source of friction since George Bush became president of the US two years ago. One of his first moves was to introduce an energy bill that would have opened the region to drilling by oil companies. The bill was killed off by environmental groups and opposition from within the Senate.
But now the Republican-controlled Congress is quietly plotting to slip Alaskan drilling rights into another, less contentious bill. Pete Domenici, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has enlisted the help of members of the Senate Budget Committee to use the upcoming US Budget as a vehicle for new legislation that would allow exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Because the Budget includes Mr Bush's $674bn (£413bn) economic stimulus package, the whole thing is expected to pass very smoothly.
Until now, Alaska's considerable oil reserves, set aside in 1923 for a military emergency, have remained well defended by public opinion, and largely untouched. Those who want to keep them that way ask what would happen if an accident took place and crude were allowed to leak underneath the Alaskan tundra, causing lasting environmental damage.
So just as this controversy was surfacing again, BP has found itself in the spotlight. In the wake of BP's well explosion, the Alaskan authorities are increasing their scrutiny of the group's operations. But worse still is the effect all this has had on the image of the oil industry.
BP has specifically pitched itself as a company that pursues sustainability around the world. As a result of its efforts, and along with some of its rivals, it has found its way into the portfolios of socially responsible investment funds (SRIs).
Now big "ethical" investors like Isis are calling on BP to explain its behaviour, and the company's position in those SRI funds could swiftly come under review.
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