An interview with Lord Browne, CEO of BP, gives a sense of the costs which the anti-capitalist mentality imposes on business.
“We have 500 lawyers,” admits Browne, “and that only covers half our work because for litigation we call in local people. About 90pc of the litigation BP is involved in emanates from the US. That’s the way business is done there.... The Sarbanes-Oxley legislation in the US probably costs us an additional $100m (£60m) a year in external costs. Of course that doesn’t count the time we spend on it internally”
Can you imagine how much extra oil and gas we might have found if BP had devoted $100 million a year to hiring and training 500 petroleum engineers instead?
