Fortune and fantasy on Africa's oil frontier
Here’s a worrisome bit of reporting from the New York Times: “Regulator Lets the Industry Call the Shots on Safety.” Eric Lipton and John Broder report that the Minerals Management Service and the Interior Department never took the actions necessary to impose backup systems to control the giant undersea valves known as blowout preventers. This despite numerous spills and repeated warnings about the necessity of such measures over more than a decade.
The article continues with a list of oversights, safety violations and government passes for the industry. Again, I wonder about Africa. Who is regulating drilling operations and enforcing those regulations in West-Central Africa?
Christiane Badgley has been producing and editing documentary films for the past twenty years, with much of her work focused on the U.S. criminal justice system and post-colonial African politics and history.
