The US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee has scheduled a hearing into BP over its actions in the run-up to last year’s release of convicted Libyan Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed al-Megrahi from a Scottish jail.Â
However, with BP branded enemy number one by the US following the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the chance to scapegoat the British oil giant on seemingly unrelated grounds is just too good to pass up for some in the US government looking to score political points and gain further media face time according to a leading Middle East oil and gas analyst.Â
IHS Global Insight’s Middle East analyst Samuel Ciszuk said that: “with its reputation severely tarnished over the Gulf of Mexico disaster, BP is a convenient target for further political pressure, allowing individuals in the US Senate and Congress to gain some more media mileage out of al-Megrahi’s release—which in itself was always deeply unpopular in the United States.”
BP is alleged to have lobbied for the release of al-Megrahi (convicted of blowing up a US aircraft over Scotland in 1988 that caused the deaths of 270 people, many of them US citizens) to further its own business in Libya, which was being held up by a Libyan government eager to see al-Megrahi released. BP has acknowledged publicly lobbying the United Kingdom to sign and ratify a prisoner transfer agreement, which Libya held up as a precondition to unlocking trade relations with the United Kingdom, but has defended itself against accusations of trying to affect the outcome of a judicial process itself.
“Increasing political pressure has been piled on the company in the wake of the Macondo oil spill disaster in the US Gulf of Mexico, as the company’s role in Libya is attacked, despite the affair last year seemingly having dissipated,” he said.
Ciszuk says the story remains alive partly because the relationship between the UK government and the autonomous Scottish Executive is lost on the American public. While the prisoner transfer agreement was an issue for the UK government, the release on compassionate grounds was an issue fully in the hands of the Scottish Executive, which is under constant political pressure from its own constituents to steer a maximally independent course, especially under its current Scottish-nationalist-dominated government.
The release of cancer-sufferer al-Megrahi was also in line with previous Scottish decisions of clemency, undermining the case that BP’s lobbying for the treaty vis-à -vis the UK government would have had any bearing on Scottish government. No compelling evidence over BP lobbying for al-Megrahi’s release in Scotland has been presented, despite the issue having been widely discussed and seen as controversial in the United Kingdom last year.
