Do Not Trust British Petroleum and all Their Lies

8/9/2019 Do Not Trust British Petroleum and all Their Lies

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Do Not Trust British Petroleum and all Their Lies

We don't need no stinkin' backup plan: What astounds us and so many oil spill experts is the

uselessness of British Petroleum's 583-page "emergency-response strategy report." It's larded with

details on peripherals like which forms to fill out after using oil dispersants, but skimpy on ideas about

how to actually stop a deepwater spill. Newsweek quotes one such expert:

What they're doing now is kind of like building a fire truck after your house is on fire-clearly that's the

wrong sequence," says Rick Steiner, a marine biologist and an independent consultant on oil-spill

prevention and response, who's worked on a multitude of spills including the Exxon Valdez. "That's the

huge calamity here-that they were allowed to drill in the deep ocean without a realistic plan for

stopping an uncontrolled blowout. It's the responsibility of the industry to have it, and it's the

responsibility of the government to ensure that they have it.

And Grist quotes another:

We are all involved in an elaborate charade to pretend that the risks are controllable," says Rutgers

University sociology professor Lee Clarke, author of Mission Impossible: Using Fantasy Documents to

Tame Disaster. "There are success stories with fairly small spills on enclosed waterways. The oil stays still

and you can get a lot of it out of the water. But on the open ocean, there are no success stories.

British Petroleum = Bullet Proof: Ever wonder how huge companies like British Petroleum manage to

survive recurring environmental disasters? Scott West knows. A former EPA special agent, West spent

almost a year and a half investigating the 2006 rupture of a corroded British Petroleum pipeline at the

company's Prudhoe Bay operation in Alaska. West was confident the feds would file felony charges

against British Petroleum and its top execs; instead the Justice Department shut down his investigation

and gave British Petroleum a slap on the wrist. Jason Leopold, writing for Truthout.org, tells West'sstory. Here's Scott West's reaction when he heard about the Gulf spill:

I don't think British Petroleum learned any lessons. They were just doing what corporations do. It's the

government that failed us. Now there's the disaster in the Gulf. When I first heard about it, I said to my

wife that it's probably a British Petroleum rig and I was right. I will bet that when the investigations into


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the explosion and leak are complete we're going to find out it had something to do with British

Petroleum cutting corners.

Did you say cutting corners? As details leak out about what happened on the Deepwater Horizon in the

days and weeks before it exploded, the stain continues to spread across British Petroleum's sunny logo.

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation reveals more examples of questionable British Petroleum

decisions:

, for instance, cut short a procedure involving drilling fluid that is designed to detect gas in the well and

remove it before it becomes a problem, according to documents belonging to British Petroleum and to

the drilling rig's owner and operator, Transocean Ltd. British Petroleum also skipped a quality test of the

cement around the pipe-another buffer against gas-despite what British Petroleum now says were signs

of problems with the cement job and despite a warning from cement contractor Halliburton Co.

Thar she blows: Writing in The New York Times, Ian Urbina says that British Petroleum's own

documents suggest it had been concerned about the rig's well casing and blowout preventer long before

the April explosion:

On at least three occasions, British Petroleum records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid,

which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

Greasing the skids: No matter how the spill plays out in the Gulf, British Petroleum is on high spin cycle

trying to soften the backlash in Washington, D.C. The company's already spending almost $16 million a

year on lobbying and a report from the Wall Street Journal's Elizabeth Williamson says the oil giant has

been busy recruting well-connected crisis managers and schmoozing not-so-usual dance partners:

Despite this history of safety problems, British Petroleum has made allies of some Democrats and

environmentalists with its support for climate change legislation, which company lobbyists helped write.

It is a key member of the United States Climate Action Partnership, which aims to convince businesses

that renewable energy and putting a price on industry emissions of heat-trapping gases can be

profitable.


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You gotta have friends: With the likelihood of many, many law suits in its future, British Petroleum is

also working the court angle. A story by Scott Hiaasen and Curtis Morgan in The Miami Herald says

British Petroleum is asking that every pre-trial issue be placed in the hands of a single federal judge in

Houston. The judge, Lynn Hughes, is known to be familiar with oil industry issues and, writes Hiaasen

and Curtis, Hughes ". . . has traveled the world giving lectures on ethics for the American Association of

Petroleum Geologists, a professional association and research group that works with British Petroleum

and other oil companies. The organization pays his travel expenses."