miércoles, 27 de febrero de 2013

Shell and negative externalities


Itzel Verónica Otero Sánchez
Sociedad y Política de Estados Unidos
27 de febrero de 2013


In today’s Washington Post there is an article that talks about the abandonment of Arctic drilling by the multinational oil and gas company, Shell. In this article is said that “this is a temporary cease-fire in one of the nation’s fiercest political battles over energy development and environmental protection”. This problem started years ago when the company construction problems and equipment failures delayed the plans to drill for oil in the Arctic Ocean and after an oil spill containment dome failed and the . Coast Guard started to investigate the Noble Discoverer for criminally inadequate pollution and safety controls.
It is a fact that Shell's attempt was widely seen as a test case for future offshore Arctic drilling, and other companies may try to do the same experiment. Meanwhile, the resent decision about the exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beafort Seas is seen as a pause because as the president of the corporation said, the company has made progress in Alaska, but since it is a long-term program that they want to pursue in a safe and measured way to avoid the problems they had in 2012 and; in order to make sure that this drilling will provide benefits both to the State of Alaska and the nation as a whole the company will ensure a safe return to the exploration.
On the other hand, the article says that the environmentalist think that the drilling shouldn’t be made because of the harsh conditions and the environmental damage that has been caused in the Arctic Ocean so here is where I can point out what the authors of American Society says about negative externalities and collective action failures that emphasize the actions of individuals and firms, pursuing their own interests in a strategic and rational way within markets, generate economic and environmental inefficiencies of various sorts.
In conclusion, The United States is a very important country because of its industrialization, its consumerism, because of its desire to work and achieve the American dream but it is also known as a Country with lots of debt, security issues, peace keeping problems and political issues too but if they want to keep their place in the ranking of the best countries in the world they must have also auto sufficiency on energy and I believe that that’s of the reasons why president Obama had made lots of improvements on the research and deployment of clean energy but since it is very expensive and the whole industry still needs oil and gas, the United States are looking for alternatives to spend money not only on buying these recourses from other countries but also on extracting these recourses from their own territory but the government also has to deal with the environmental groups who defend a different kind of interests so, president Obama has to deal with them and make sure it won’t cause more troubles because of negative externalities so that these groups support him too.



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