Advertisements on oil spill: duelling but for a cause

The duel is between Pew Environment Group and the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the battle field is the print and electronic media.

The ammunition being used is the advertisements which these conflicting groups are showing or airing.

The spill and the resultant disaster also present an opportunity to scrutinize the laws pertaining to off shore drilling and implement the necessary changes.

Reforms urged
Pew is hell bent on reforms in laws pertaining to offshore drilling for according to it, reforms is the only way to prevent the recurrence of such a disaster.

The Environment Group is running an ad with a picture of an oil-soaked pelican and reads as thus; "Help stop this from happening again. Change the law."

The ad continues to state, "The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico could easily happen again unless we change the laws that allowed it to occur in the first place."

The American Petroleum Institute's ad, which will appear in the print and electronic media as well states, "The people of America's oil and natural gas industry are working to help BP and the authorities respond to the spill."

"Clearly, there will be lessons to be learned, and we are fully committed to doing everything humanly possible to understand what happened and prevent it from ever happening again," acknowledges the advertisement.

The advertisement harps on the fact that oil and natural gas are "vital domestic resources that power our way of life."

API will depend on its ad big time as the U.S. government contemplates policy changes because of the oil spill. Not only that, public polls indicate a waning support for offshore drilling.

According to a poll conducted June 3-6 by The Washington Post and ABC News, support for drilling has fallen from 64 percent in August of 2009 to 52 percent now.

Finding cause more important
The Gulf spill, which is the worst catastrophe in the history of the United States, is being seen as a symbol of broader problems.

The spill and the resultant disaster also present an opportunity to scrutinize the laws pertaining to off shore drilling and implement the necessary changes.

Chris Mann, senior officer at the Pew Environment Group, said, "A lot of people we're talking to on the Hill feel that Congress has to act on this, including committee and chamber leadership."

Mann added, "It's a major challenge to the Obama administration. Politically it seems to have become a huge liability. They need to demonstrate that they are hitting this head-on."

API, on the other hand, is insisting that the cause of the accident that occurred April 20 and killed 11 BP workers, be determined first and then suitable action be taken.

Mann refuses to relent and states that while a human error or technological lapse could be the probably factors, "the ultimate cause of the spill, ultimately we believe is a failure of governance."