GULF OIL SPILL - Update, Halliburton Destroyed Evidence

This as backdrop to BP's 'we are great' TV add campaign.  Can you hear the echo of shredders going full bore?

"Halliburton Admits Destroying Evidence in 'Grim Sorting Out' of Gulf Spill Blame" PBS Newshour 7/26/2013

Excerpt

HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour):  Soon after the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, three companies began a blame game over whose mistakes were most responsible for the environmental disaster.  That battle, which continues to play out in court, involved BP, Transocean, and Halliburton.

BP leased the Deepwater Horizon from Transocean.  It also owned much of the Macondo well that erupted and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf.  Halliburton was contracted to design and build the well.

One of the key arguments has been about whether Halliburton's work on the well may have led to the blowout that killed 11 people.  Yesterday, Halliburton pleaded guilty to destroying evidence in 2010 about test simulations it did with cement in the wake of the accident.

Paul Barrett has been following this story for Bloomberg Businessweek and fills us in.

AMERICA - Gulf Oil Spill Update, BP Fined $4.5 Billion (updated)

"BP to pay record fine in Gulf oil spill; 2 to face manslaughter charges" by AP, CBS News 11/15/2012

Excerpt

BP said Thursday that it will pay $4.5 billion in a settlement with the U.S. government over the massive 2010 oil spill and will plead guilty to felony counts related to the deaths of 11 workers and lying to Congress.

The figure includes nearly $1.3 billion in criminal fines — the largest such penalty ever — along with payments to several government entities.

Meanwhile, a source close to the case confirmed to CBS News Thursday that two BP employees face manslaughter charges over the 11 deaths in the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that triggered the massive spill.

"We believe this resolution is in the best interest of BP and its shareholders," said Carl-Henric Svanberg, BP's Chairman. "It removes two significant legal risks and allows us to vigorously defend the company against the remaining civil claims."

The settlement includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences and about $500 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

London-based BP PLC said in a statement that the settlement would not include civil claims under the Clean Water Act and other legislation, pending private civil claims and state claims for economic loss.

The charges BP will plead guilty to include 11 felony counts of misconduct or neglect of ships officers, one felony count of obstruction of Congress and one misdemeanor count each under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Clean Water Act. The 11 counts related to the workers' deaths are under a provision of the Seaman's Manslaughter Act.

The obstruction charge is for lying to Congress about how much oil was pouring out of the ruptured well.

Attorney General Eric Holder was scheduled to discuss the settlement at an afternoon news conference in New Orleans.

BP made a profit of $5.5 billion in the third quarter.

The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Department of Justice was a $1.2 billion fine imposed on drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

"BP to Pay Largest Fine in U.S. History, Admit Guilt in Gulf Oil Spill Settlement"
PBS Newshour 11/15/2012

BP - Feds Ignore Safety Concerns

"Feds Let BP Off Probation Despite Pending Safety Violations" by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica 3/12/2012

BP’s refining subsidiary was released today from criminal probation related to a 2005 explosion in Texas City that killed 15 workers.

The company has addressed the most serious safety deficiencies exposed by the accident and satisfied the terms of a felony plea agreement to settle charges that it failed to protect workers from known risks, a U.S. Justice Department spokesman said.

The move closes a controversial chapter for the company, but it leaves an array of worker-safety issues unresolved. BP is still negotiating over more than 400 additional violations brought against its Texas City refinery separately from the criminal case.

Following the explosion, the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and BP reached a settlement requiring the company to address safety issues at the refinery. Fixing those problems became one of the Justice Department’s conditions for settling felony charges relating to the explosion and for ending the three-year probation period.

In late 2009, however, after a series of inspections, OSHA determined that BP had not addressed many of its safety lapses and levied 270 additional violations and a $87.4 million fine. It also hit the company with another 439 additional “egregious and willful” safety violations at the refinery that were not a component of the criminal case.

At issue then was whether the company had violated some of the most important terms of its probation even after it was given a second chance. In 2010, BP settled with OSHA, paying the agency $50.6 million and committing to making substantive safety changes by the court-set sunset of its probation period today (March 12).

A Justice Department spokesman said BP has met its obligations for probation, including addressing the 270 violations. The remaining 400 or so OSHA violations, however, were not specific to the Texas City agreement.

“These violations were unrelated to the 2005 settlement agreement and did not in the Department's view rise to criminal conduct,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, an agency spokesman, in a statement to ProPublica. “The Department did not seek any extension or revocation of BP's criminal probation.”

The resolution of those remaining violations will be dealt with administratively, by OSHA, Hornbuckle said, and not by the courts.

As the probation expired, confusion remained about exactly what improvements BP had made at its refineries. According to the 2010 agreement with OSHA, BP pledged to address the risk of catastrophic chemical releases and to install new protective equipment and instrument systems across the sprawling refinery’s 28 units.

It was not clear how much progress the company had made, however, and BP spokesman Daren Beaudo characterized the OSHA issues as Unresolved.

“We continue to work with OSHA to resolve these issues,” Beaudo wrote in an email. BP declined to say whether it had made any of the specific improvements listed in its 2010 settlement agreement, or to say how much money it had invested at the Texas City plant to meet the terms of its agreement with OSHA.

A spokeswoman for OSHA said the agency remained in negotiations with the company.

In an email exchange, OSHA told ProPublica that the agency could not provide copies of any of the quarterly progress reports that BP had agreed to submit, and that it was “unable” to specify how many of its outstanding violations BP had addressed.

On March 23, 2005, a facility used to distill gasoline and boost its octane content was overfilled by BP workers, spewing a geyser of flammable liquid into the air. The subsequent explosion destroyed an office trailer nearby, killed 15 workers, and sent nearly 200 more to area hospitals.

Like the investigations into BP’s Deepwater Horizon accident in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, a series of reports analyzing the refinery disaster found that the company had failed to follow basic steps to avert a disaster, had not installed or maintained equipment that would have helped prevent the leak and the explosion, and generally had a poor safety approach.

A 2010 investigation by ProPublica found that in the years before the explosion, BP had been repeatedly warned that its facilities were in need of repair, and the company had declined to replace ailing equipment — including the unit that failed the day of the explosion — in order to cut costs.

Documents obtained by ProPublica showed that an internal BP report shortly before the disaster said that employees at the plant worked with “an exceptional degree of fear.” The report warned that the plant might “kills (sic) someone in the next 12-18 months.”

The Texas refinery, which produces about 3 percent of the country’s gasoline, continued to have problems after the explosion. Several more workers died in accidents, and in 2010, the plant was found emitting a huge cloud of unpermitted toxic emissions.

After the toxic release, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ), Texas’s chief environmental regulator, charged the company with emissions reporting violations and alleged it had violated the terms of its probation with the federal government. BP settled that case, as well as an another similar emissions violation, with Texas in late 2011.

That left the criminal probation period and the outstanding OSHA violations as the final chapters in the Texas City saga.

BP has endeavored to keep the Texas City accident separate from claims and ongoing investigations into its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As recently as two weeks ago, the company’s lawyers argued in court that past accidents should have no bearing on a trial to decide liability for the Deepwater Horizon explosion that killed 11 workers.

BP sought to strike portions of testimony about Texas City and other past incidents from its former CEO, Tony Hayward, in depositions that would be admitted to the court.

BP announced last year that it would sell its Texas City refinery along with another facility outside Los Angeles. The company said this week it has suitors and expects to complete a sale by year’s end.

Hay, after all BP has such an outstanding reputation on caring about safety.... NOT!

GULF OF MEXICO - Lets Trust BP.... NOT!

"BP Seeks to Resume Drilling in Gulf of Mexico" by JULIA WERDIGIER and JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times 4/3/2011

Excerpt

BP has asked United States regulators for permission to resume drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, two company officials said on Sunday, creating a delicate situation for the Obama administration as it seeks to balance safety concerns with a desire to increase domestic oil production.

The petition comes less than 12 months after a rig BP had leased there exploded, causing a huge oil spill and killing 11 workers. The accident tarnished BP’s image and raised questions about its safety procedures.

Just last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was considering a range of civil and criminal penalties against BP, including potential manslaughter charges for the deaths of the rig workers, as part of its ongoing investigation into the accident.

At the same time, President Obama, in a major statement on energy policy last week, said the administrations was seeking to reduce dependence on imported oil in part by increasing domestic production, both onshore and off. BP was one of the major producers in the gulf before the accident.

BP is seeking permission to continue drilling at 10 existing deepwater production and development wells in the region in July in exchange for adhering to stricter safety and supervisory rules, said one of the officials. An agreement could be reached within the next month but would not include new drilling, the official said.

The other official said, “We’re making progress but it’s not a yes yet.” Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity because talks on a possible agreement were continuing.

Can you believe these assholes (excuse my language)!

We are supposed to just trust them to continue drilling after what they did?!

I hope that they do NOT receive approval unless it includes very, very stringent regulation and close monitoring by people have never been connected to BP or its affiliates.

This should include a very detailed inspection of EACH rig and that ALL problems be fixed, and reinspected, BEFORE the rig is approved. Note, re-inspection is NOT just a letter from BP stating a problem has been fixed; their word has no credibility.

OIL SPILL - Human Interest Side

"After Oil Spill Crisis, a Protector Keeps Watch" by DAN BARRY, New York Times 12/20/2010

Excerpt

A daughter of Plaquemines Parish, her camouflage outfit the color of the forest, checks the oil. She checks the steering, the coolant, the gas. She makes sure that everything is tied down or stored away, so that nothing loose will fly into the fanlike propeller at the rear of her airboat. “Maintenance,” she says. “Maintenance.”

Then off she roars, a singular woman named Albertine Marie Kimble, guiding her airboat across the grass and into the precious marsh waters, where she is most at home. An honor guard of green-winged teal ducks rises to greet her, the only resident of this southeastern Louisiana spot called Carlisle.

“Wow!” she shouts. “Whee-e-e-e!”

The BP oil spill of 2010 has come and gone, mostly. The cleanup armies have been reduced to platoons, the oil company’s public-relations blitz has lost its apologetic urgency, and you have to know where to look to find any remnants of the catastrophe. But Albertine Kimble, protector of these waters, is still here; she has neither forgotten nor forgiven.

She is not an oil rigger, or an oysterman, or a shrimper. She is the coastal program manager for Plaquemines Parish, tending to its wounded banks. She is also the parish itself, rooted generations-deep in its soft soil, an outdoorswoman living in a remote mobile home raised nine feet off the ground by creosote poles and galvanized girders.

OIL SPILL - BP Lawsuit Begins

"BP Faces Lawsuit to Recover Billions in Damages From Gulf Spill"
PBS Newshour 12/15/2010

OIL SPILL - The Commission Hearing

"At Oil Spill Commission Hearing, 'Rough Day' for BP, Halliburton, Transocean"
PBS Newshour 11/8/2010

From the transcript

"And the commission has been handicapped. They don't have the subpoena power."

WHAT?!

I wonder who is to blame for that? I would not put it past the Republicans quashing subpoena power for this important commission.

As for the testamentary, the company representatives present were likely coached by company lawyers NOT to say anything that could be construed as an admission of guilt. After all, there are years of BIG$ lawsuits waiting at the door.

I look forward to the commission's final report. ( due January 2011)

ENVIRONMENT - Frontline on BP and the Gulf Oil Spill

Frontline aired what I consider to be a damning show on BP and the Gulf oil spill.

I highly recommend my readers view the show online: "The Spill" Frontline (54min)

What I took from this show is this is what happens when a company grows too big, too fast, and is lead by people who do NOT REALLY understand the industry they are a member of. Where money is much more important than anything else, an "account's" view.

OIL SPILL - BP's Side of the Story

"BP Admits Errors in Gulf Oil Disaster But Spreads Blame"
PBS Newshour 9/8/2010

BIG OIL - The New Protection Racketeers

"BP Says Limits on Drilling Imperil Oil Spill Payouts" by CLIFFORD KRAUSS & JOHN M. BRODER, New York Times 9/2/2010

Excerpt

BP is warning Congress that if lawmakers pass legislation that bars the company from getting new offshore drilling permits, it may not have the money to pay for all the damages caused by its oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The company says a ban would also imperil the ambitious Gulf Coast restoration efforts that officials want the company to voluntarily support.

BP executives insist that they have not backed away from their commitment to the White House to set aside $20 billion in an escrow fund over the next four years to pay damage claims and government penalties stemming from the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. The explosion killed 11 workers and spewed millions of barrels of oil into the gulf.

The company has also agreed to contribute $100 million to a foundation to support rig workers who have lost their jobs because of the administration’s deepwater drilling moratorium. And it pledged $500 million for a 10-year research program to study the impact of the spill.

But as state and federal officials, individuals and businesses continue to seek additional funds beyond the minimum fines and compensation that BP must pay under the law, the company has signaled its reluctance to cooperate unless it can continue to operate in the Gulf of Mexico. The gulf accounts for 11 percent of its global production.

Humm... sound familiar?

"Hay. Mr. Business Owner, you pay me and my colleges, and we'll see that nothing BAD happens to your business." Ye old Protection Racket (aka shake-down).

OIL SPILL - BP's Troubled Safety Record

"Panel Presses BP on Its Safety Record" by ROBBIE BROWN, New York Times 8/26/2010

Federal investigators pressed senior BP officials on Thursday about whether the company had a troubled record of safety problems even before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster.

Taking a step back for perspective, a government panel exploring the rig explosion raised pointed questions about what lessons had been learned from several previous emergencies in 2002 and 2005. Time after time, BP appeared to have gambled with safety, said a chairman of the panel, Capt. Hung Nguyen of the Coast Guard.

“One dot is a point, two dots is a line, and three dots is a trend,” Captain Nguyen said. “There’s a trend there about the safety culture of BP. These things keep happening.”

The observation emerged as the panel of Coast Guard and Interior Department representatives received testimony from three senior BP officials. Since the hearings began in May, the focus has gradually shifted from low-level rig workers to shore-based managers for the companies involved in drilling the well.

The previous situations cited by the board included two little-known near-blowouts on oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico in 2002, the near-capsizing of a rig in 2005 and a major explosion at a Texas refinery in 2005. In response to each, BP conducted investigations and took necessary action, including spending $1.4 billion after the explosion in Texas, said Kent Wells, the company’s senior vice president for exploration and production.

But the panel called on Mr. Wells to read aloud from a 2003 letter from the federal Minerals Management Service that rebuked BP after the 2002 incidents.

“The circumstances surrounding these incidents have raised questions about the ability of BP to safely conduct drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico,” the letter states.

Another senior BP official, David Sims, the drilling and completions operations manager, faced more than six hours of questioning about his role during the final weeks of the Deepwater Horizon. He was pressed by investigators and lawyers about decisions not to conduct certain safety tests and to select riskier equipment for the well.

Pressed on whether workers called it “the well from hell,” Mr. Sims would say only, “It was a well that had a number of problems.”

OIL SPILL - Update, Behind the Scenes

"Behind Scenes of Gulf Oil Spill, Acrimony and Stress" by CLIFFORD KRAUSS, HENRY FOUNTAIN, JOHN M. BRODER; New York Times 8/26/2010

Excerpt

The official death of the now-notorious Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico is expected after Labor Day, with the completion of a relief well. Whether the four-month effort to kill it was a remarkable feat of engineering performed under near-impossible circumstances or a stumbling exercise in trial and error that took longer than it should have will be debated for some time.

But interviews with BP engineers and technicians, contractors and Obama administration officials who, with the eyes of the world upon them, worked to stop the flow of oil, suggest that the process was also far more stressful, hair-raising and acrimonious than the public was aware of.

There were close calls, the details of which were not released to the public, like the panic over the rising dome. Sleep-deprived men and women neglected family birthdays and watched long-planned summer vacations vanish. Inside the command center here and at the well site, 40 miles off the coast of Louisiana, tempers flared — in one heated argument, a senior engineer on a ship threatened to throw another senior engineer overboard — and blood pressures rose.

The dome was only the first public debacle. As failure followed failure, the relationship between BP executives and administration officials deteriorated, resulting in disputes that some oil industry experts say delayed the killing of the well.

Looking back, administration officials said that they became concerned that BP could not handle the crisis and that at crucial junctures the company made serious errors of judgment. “There was an arc of loss of confidence,” said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. “I was not comfortable they knew what they were doing.”

Those on the industry side saw it differently. “The only benefit I see is they actually challenged us to a level of detail and communication,” Mark Mazzella, BP’s top well-control expert, said of the government scientists who stepped in to supervise the effort. “They didn’t offer anything that changed anything we actually did.”