As I have written before, I believe that services that pay you to blog can be quite valuable, especially when you are just starting out.

Thus, I tend to check them every now and then to see what kind of opportunities are on offer. Now, as you would expect, most are internet marketing opportunities or related to other aspects of online business.

So, I was fairly intrigued to see an offer from BP, particularly as it was headed “Striving to minimize the environmental impact of their actions” and was specifically aimed at non US citizens.

The kind of thing that just shouts “Read Me”……So, I did.

Apparently, BP have received permission from State regulators in Indiana to increase the amounts of toxic chemicals (ammonia and industrial sludge) that are released from their refinery in Whiting, Ind., into Lake Michigan.

This attracted a particularly unfavorable article in the Chicago Tribune

In response, BR published a “BP Whiting Fact Sheet” that sets out the company’s side of the argument.

In the fact sheet, BP states:

• That they plan to spend over US$3 billion to modernize the Whiting plant to process crude oil from Canada

• that they will be employing another 80 full time employees at the plant

• and that the Whiting Refinery voluntarily reduced total suspended solids in its water discharge by 40% in just the past four years.

So, there does not seem to be any dispute about the increase, but obviously BP feel hard done by with the Tribune article.

My main thought here is that, yes, an increase in pollution is not a good thing. But, energy usage is increasing all over the world, and it has got to come from somewhere.

Equally, this comes only a few days after an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale damaged the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power station, in Japan, causing it to be shut down pending safety checks, after the quake caused a radioactive leak.

So, I think that whilst we are all agreed that pollution is bad, there must be a degree of perspective, and, faced with the options of which type of pollution I had to put up with, a little more ammonia seems a lot less scary than the problems facing the good citizens of Kashiwazaki.

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