FOR online gambling executives, travelling to the US has itself become a dangerous bet. Peter Dicks, the British chairman of Sportingbet, was taken into custody on his arrival at JFK airport on Wednesday evening when the US authorities in New York acted on a warrant for his arrest issued by the Louisiana state police. Coming less than two months after David Carruthers, the BetOnSports chief executive, was detained while he was changing planes in Dallas, the news yesterday wiped the better part of £1 billion off the value of internet gambling businesses. The arrest was interpreted as a sign of a concerted US effort to crack down on online gambling. If only it was that clear.

The arrest is bound to encourage the absurd antiAmerican camp in corporate Britain that has exploited rational opposition to the Bush Administration’s foreign policy to launch thoughtless, Blimpish attacks on all that is American. To be clear, Britons are not the only ones in the gambling business to have fallen foul of the lottery that is US legislation on betting and gaming. (Louisiana’s own former governor, the flamboyantly corrupt Edwin Edwards, is languishing in jail for what became known as his “bad bet on the Bayou”.)

But America has become fraught with risk for the online gambling industry, because the US treatment of the business is both ambivalent and arcane. The US is schizophrenic about its attitude towards gambling. On the one hand, casinos dot America’s landscape, from the neon palaces of Las Vegas to some 400 more modest venues on Indian reservations. In 2004 Americans paid more than 300 million visits to them — nearly twice the figure of five years previously. On the other, conservative Christians have driven a political process that has seen a Bill to ban internet gambling outright get halfway through the US Congress. It is unlikely to pass the Senate.

To make matters worse, US law is open to entirely contradictory interpretations. Some US courts have deemed it makes online gambling illegal, others have ruled that it is legal. No wonder there is such confusion; the Wire Act of 1961 “prohibits the use of wire communication for provision of bets or wagers on any sporting event or contest”.

America’s treatment of online gambling matters — and not only to the executives who find themselves playing American roulette at US immigration. US gamblers account for about half of the roughly $12 billion global internet gambling market, and that market is expected to double by 2010.

It is hard to play by the rules, when they are so arbitrary and arcane.

STICKY PATCH

“THE shine has come off BP.” This was the judgment of BP executives, speaking under oath before an angry panel of US congressmen in Washington yesterday. They were not wrong. Joe Barton, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, harangued the company for making billions of dollars in profit and then failing to maintain its pipeline in Alaska. Mr Barton wondered out loud whether BP should be permitted to operate in America.

Mr Barton may not have the power to dismantle BP’s operations in Alaska even if he wants to but he is expressing the disillusion of a nation with a foreign company that liked to appear years ahead of America’s own Big Oil. BP is in deep trouble with American public opinion. BP’s contrition was not exactly helped by the company’s former pipeline corrosion manager pleading the Fifth Amendment rather than answer the committee’s questions.

Lord Browne of Madingley, the BP chief executive who for so long has been the unfailing advocate of the company, has been conspicuous by his absence for the past month. He badly needs to be seen back manning the pump. The company also needs to get full production flowing from Prudhoe Bay as fast as possible. BP reckons it can be back to 400,000 barrels a day by the end of October, if the authorities permit.

For there is much in BP’s favour. The politics will ease, at least for a while, after the mid-term elections. The prospect of supplies easing is having a big impact on the crude market. Prices have tumbled 15 per cent in a month. Unless supply risks return, the price could keep drifting too.

That should feed through to the pumps and make car drivers feel less angry towards the company most easily identified with high prices.

• PHILIP FLETCHER has been a vigilant regulator of the water industry. He is alarmed by the interests of financial buyers in the sector, worried that they may neglect the investment that ageing water mains require. He has set strict limits on company debt and spurred operators to stay in robust financial health. But he has proved better at setting rules than enforcing them. Ofwat compromised with Thames Water over a multimillion-pound fine for leakages. Penalties are powerful. Water is a public good that needs strong public stewardship.

  jamesharding@thetimes.co.uk

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