BP activists pour oil on troubled waters
A crowd sourcing site launch - which aims to provide a means to share images, video and reports from the scene of BP's Gulf oil leak - has thrust ongoing ramifications of the spill into the spotlight.
A rising torrent of bad publicity is denuding BP with a flow of negative publicity just as unstoppable as its Gulf leak as public anger spills over into the internet with a myriad of activists harnessing the web to undermine BP's slick PR machine. And try as they might BP can’t put a plug in it.
Twitter leads the way with one mischievous wag bombarding the world with a steady stream of tweeted puns, evidently in the belief that if you didn't laugh you'd cry:
@BPGlobalPR Best part of the BP Memorial Day Picnic? The custom made oily dunk tank! So far we've dunked 4 ducks, a dolphin, 2 otters and @bpTerry!
@BPGlobalPR KFC now offering the Top Kill sandwich! Bacon. Cheese. Mud. Sandwiched between two oily chicken slabs served on a plate of shame #bpcares
@BPGlobalPR What a gorgeous day! The ocean is filled with the most beautiful rainbows! #yourewelcome #bpcares
Meanwhile one blogger, ‘fishgrease’, combines his knowledge of booming with an appreciation of vulgar language to lambast BP for a shoddy effort at containing the spill thus far, diagram pictured.
“I lost my one copy of Photoshop, had to learn Gimp, and so the quality is sorta piece-of-shit-c*nt, but you get the idea. It's fucking obvious. Boom is not meant to contain or catch oil. Boom is meant to divert oil. Boom must always be at an angle to the prevailing wind-wave action or surface current. Boom, at this angle, must always be layered in a fucking overlapped sort-of way with another string of boom. Boom must always divert oil to a catch basin or other container, from where it can be REMOVED FROM THE FUCKING AREA. Looks kinda involved, doesn't it? It is. But if fucking proper fucking booming is done properly, you can remove most, by far most of the oil from a shoreline and you can do it day after day, week after week, month after month.”
But with BP's share price down a further 11% today and a fix potentially not available until August - this is no laughing matter for money men and Dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico.