Oil spill gutting confidence - and staining reputations

This article was published in The Age 31 May 2010

In the US, which assumes no engineering challenge is beyond conquer - nor does it lack the private capital to achieve it - the brackish rouge beneath the waves that is slowly strangling the Louisiana shore not only stains the sea and the sands.

That creeping black is also gutting confidence, upturning myths and ruining reputations.

When Americans learnt at the weekend that British Petroleum (BP) - which drilled the hole in the seabed nearly two kilometres under the sea - had attempted to seal it 16 times since Thursday by forcing shredded rope, plastics, old tyres and even golf balls into the failed, four-storey high blow-out preventer, the crudity of the assault seemed strangely out of step with our times.