The wages of addiction

摘要

At around four o'clock on Sunday af-ternoon the bad news came through. Severe corrosion had been found in a rusting pipeline owned by BP in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields in Alaska, and a little oil had seeped out. As a result, on August 6th BP decided to shut down the oilfield-America's largest, accounting for 8% of domestic production-until 16 miles (26 km) of pipeline could be fixed.