Breaking news tells that London based British Petroleum is closing down the Alaskan Pipeline and the Prudhoe Bay Oil fields to repair a leak in the pipeline.. Leaks happen, I understand that, and in the grand scheme of things the Alaskan oil fields only produce about 8% of the US domestic oil so it ’shouldn’t’ affect price very much.. But it will as even more profit taking happens.. This really isn’t the issue for me..

My concern is that foreign based and owned companies are now purchasing significant amounts of US based infrastructure.. From oil pipelines to toll roads.. Where I live we have a group from Austrailia and Spain purchasing the Toll Road near me.. They are paying a one time lease fee of 72 billion dollars.. That’s $72,000,000,000 dollars.. And they get all the tolls collected over the next 75 years.. It sure is a quick hit in the pocket for the state, especially when they say that the toll road has been loosing money for a while now.. But this company has projected that they will project some 160 billion dollars over the 75 years from this deal.. now, how can they make money when local government can’t??

And then we had the sale of major US ports happening that involved a company from the middle east.. What an uproar that caused.. And it got stopped.. Even though a Chinese company is already involved in the ports and we don’t actually own them right now anyway..

This trend bothers me for several reasons.. The first is pure nationalism.. Here we are, handing control of potentially important national infrastructure to companies in pther parts of the world.. How are we supposed to maintain control?? What if that current friendly becomes a hostile later?? Like today’s announcement of the pipline closure.. How is letting a company based in London control 8% of the US oil suppoly a good thing?? And even more importantly, this same company already has a history of spills and non-compliance.. Why do they still control it??

But, as important as this is, what really bothers me most is that total lack of competence of our own governement.. Here is a group that says that they can’t break even be providing basic services (roads etc) to the nation, yet a foreign company can turn a rather healthy profit from that exact same deal?? If you can’t provide these services, what good are you??

~Fey