Due to the catastrophe in the Mexican Gulf, the word on the streets is the "British Petroleum". We, however, are willing to continue our conversation not about the accident in the Mexican Gulf itself, but rather about the most curious moments of transnational capitalism history itself. While discussing the peculiarities of this system — once dubbed the "world of shadows that is occasionally lit by the beams of light" by a major Russian politician — we might be guided by the definition of such contemporary term as the "fractals". Fractal (from Latin "fractus" — fractured) is a term introduced by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1975 to describe the irregular and yet self-resembling structures. Even the small part of a fractal contains the full information about whole fractal.
Official history claims that in May of 1901 British aristocrat William Knox D’Arcy — who succeeded at the gold-mining in Australia — "was granted the approval of Persian government" for the geological exploration and production of oil. A bit less official version adds that the "approval" was obtained thanks to the series of bribes to the corrupted Persian bureaucrats and noblemen, crowned by the payment of ?5000 (just for some out-of-pocket expenses) to the Persian Shah himself, who was selling out the future of the dependent country for the sake of his personal prosperity. "Approval" actually meant concession — minor part for the needs of local "leadership", a little bit — to the treasury and the rest — to the Western shareholders — usual scheme for the "Eastern expansion". At that time it was just the royalty — nominal charge for the right to extract the natural resources — that was left in the production country. Third-world countries took the audacity to impose the tax for the concessionaire’s profits only in the second half of the 20th century.
In reality British government acted as functionary, serious gentlemen with the private capital from the profitable companies haven’t ever disappeared. All the more, during the period between the two world wars the company that became the "Anglo-Iranian" one managed to achieve quite significant successes, going with the times and thoroughly developing itself. The twentieth century was the century of oil and the "seven sisters" — seven leading Anglo-American oil companies, including the BP as of right — profiteered on that rather nicely.
Current top-manager Tom Hayward now also has the reason for premature resignation. However, taking his positions at the Citigroup financial group and the post at the Chartered Management Institute (recognized British centre for the international management training) into consideration, he would also find something to comfort himself with. He would have to leave the much-talked-about "Bilderberg Group". However, there’s already the constant representative of "British Petroleum" over there — Peter Sutherland, company’s board chair, one of the Goldman Sachs leaders and the head of London school of economics, who failed to become a head of the Euro-commission in 2004. Still, he used to be the head of the World Trade Organization in 1995.
Current crisis, catastrophe at the Mexican Gulf and the show trials over the Goldman Sachs tricksters may, from one hand, be the forerunners of the major changes in life of the most famous Western oil company. From the other hand, they still may turn out to be zilch. The essence lies too deep, you see.
https://win.ru/en/win/4600.phtml
By Marat Kunaev
