RadioReview: The signal for BBC Radio 4 tends to fade the further west you go on this island, so it's unlikely that too many people in Rossport, fresh from their picket lines against the Shell pipeline, might have heard Tuesday's File on 4. Though had they tuned in by cable or broadband, they would have found many things in this excellent investigative programme to add to their arguments about how giant oil companies can fail to protect the little guy.
Reporter Julian O'Halloran investigated charges that BP courted disaster by cutting corners on safety and maintenance. He looked at two shocking events: the catastrophic oil spill in Alaska in March due to erosion in BP's transit pipes, and the explosion in March 2005 at its Texas City refinery. That explosion killed 15 workers and injured 170.
This year's leak in the North Slope region of Alaska was discovered quite accidentally by a worker passing by in his car who smelled oil, and by the time the hole in the pipe was located five days later, 260,000 gallons of crude oil had spilled into the pristine, frozen tundra. When the extent of the corrosion was eventually revealed, BP suspended all production in Prudhoe Bay, the largest US oil field, and replaced 25km of the pipe.
O'Halloran talked to Chuck Hamel, an unofficial industry watchdog who four years previously had alerted senior BP officials that their cost-cutting and poor maintenance of the pipelines would eventually lead to disaster. For as long as seven years, O'Halloran discovered, Alaskan authorities had suspected the magnitude of pipe corrosion.
BP is under further scrutiny as the investigation into the Texas City explosion continues. The programme revealed that a report from the US Chemical Safety Board (CSB), the federal body that investigates major industrial accidents, will say that the company's cost-cutting regime had a serious impact on maintenance and infrastructure.
BP is declining to comment on the findings until the CSB issues its final report. As well as impacting on the share price, both incidents have tarnished BP's carefully cultivated environmental image, created over the last seven years by such slogans as "It's time to turn up the heat on global warming", or "It's time to think outside the barrel". "It is," says Hamel, "a great example of not walking your talk."
Susan McReynolds's new programme Spirit Moves (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday), comes with the fuzzy wuzzy, New Agey tag line "for spiritual beings having a human experience", which is enough to make anyone queasy, but for the most part it's an interesting listen.
This week saw the closing date for expressions of interest for a new broadcasting licence for a religious radio station. With the help of Malachi O'Doherty, Reynolds explored what that might possibly mean, whether it will end up being a station promoting religious devotion or one that discusses issues within a religious context and with a consideration for the understating of comparative religions. Doherty, who with frustrating vagueness was described as being "involved in religious broadcasting", was clear that he wants the latter. "Radio shouldn't be opened up to religious shysters," he said. Pity, though, that McReynolds's programme didn't broaden out to include clips from US evangelical radio stations and other examples of existing religious broadcasting on this side of the Atlantic - it would have made a lively, maybe even cautionary, listen.
It was all interested parties in The Constituency (RTÉ Radio 1, Saturday), Rachael English's new series on, well, constituencies. The first programme, which looked at what might happen in Cork in the next election, was mercifully free from politicians. Instead, English talked to tireless backroom party people, local pundits who understand what's happening on the ground, and voters. "I don't folly politics," said one man in the vox pop outside Páirc Uí Caoímh, and this is a series for political anoraks who don't just folly politics but lap up talk of transfers and boundary changes. People who not only understand but can answer enthusiastically prosaic questions such as English's "Dan Boyle. Is he safe?"
BP's green image slogans may be more aspirational than reflective of reality, but let's hope the reverse is true of 2FM's new slogan. "Livin' the life. Lovin' the music" is pure disco dad, reeking of Old Spice, a time machine to hurl you back to the 1980s. Or maybe it's über-cool in an ironic, retro sort of way, but if that's the intention it's passed me by - and it wouldn't be the first time that's happened.
