Outsourcing the dangers of oil drilling

It’s been 100 days since the oil began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. BP CEO Tony Hayward is being packed off to Russia for his bungling of the explosion’s aftermath, but tainted managers aren’t the only thing big oil is shipping overseas; they’re also moving operations to countries with lax regulations.

President Obama’s moratorium on offshore drilling has created an incentive to relocate. Will rigs move from 50 miles south of the Mississippi Delta all the way over to the Niger Delta? Nigeria has fewer environmental protections on the oil industry and even less money generated from the drilling reaches local populations. Nigeria is hardly alone in those appealing (to an oil company, at least) respects.

Peter Maass, author of “Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil,” takes us through some of the places we’re likely to see more drilling in the future as oil companies take their drilling rigs globetrotting to avoid American regulations that may crop up in the wake of the Gulf oil spill. We touch on some of the countries that might see more drilling, and more problem spots, including Russia, Angola, Kazakhstan and others.