Is BP’s Campaign of “Ponies and Balloons” Still at Work?

July 16, 2010

by

  2 Comments

As BP claims to be closing in on stopping the gusher in the Gulf it’s worth revisiting the experience of one fisherman’s wife who was given unique, insider access to the company’s processes.

Six weeks after the Deepwater Horizon well exploded, BP invited Kindra Arnesen – wife of a Venice-based fisherman, daughter of a fisherman, a self-described “uneducated housewife who adds that “every man I’ve ever known, loved and respected was a fisherman” – to be a fly-on-the-wall during meetings at central command in Houma, flyovers of the explosion site, strategic conference calls and more. Even Kindra has no clue what they were thinking.

Given her feisty Louisiana upbringing it’s no surprise that Kindra has been doing some spilling of her own, to auditoriums filled with locals, Facebook, Youtube, CNN and other media. She came to BP’s attention when, several weeks after the explosion, she began complaining that her husband and his fishermen friends who’d been called on to help in the early days of the clean-up had been made sick from the fumes and chemicals dispersants.

“At first they tried to blame it on the Pine-Sol they’d used to clean the boat,” she huffs.

Perhaps hoping to diffuse her vocal complaints, BP invited her inside.

(For the rest of my dispatch from Louisiana, go to takepart.com.)