BP's "Other" spill being kept quiet -

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The 'other' spill BP will be keeping quiet

Monday 31 May 2010Greg Palast

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's most recent spill.

Just last week over 100,000 gallons were lost at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. It still is.

Last Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after "procedures weren't properly implemented" by BP operators, say state inspectors.

"Procedures weren't properly implemented" is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Few in the US know that BP owns the controlling stake in the transalaska pipeline. Unlike with the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP keeps its name off the big pipe.

There's another reason for the company to keep its name off the pipe - its management of it stinks. The pipe is corroded, undermanned and "basic maintenance" is a term BP has never heard of.

How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it, bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of whistleblower Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility.

BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were "reminiscent of nazi Germany."

This was not an isolated case. Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning from the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh?

Two decades ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, a courageous, steel-eyed government inspector, Dan Lawn, was hollering about corrosion all through the BP pipeline. I say "courageous" because Lawn kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

It wasn't until 2006, 17 years later, that BP claimed to have suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shutdown of the line.

It was pretty damn hard for BP to claim surprise in August 2006 that corrosion required shutting the pipeline. Five months earlier, Lawn had written his umpteenth warning when he identified corrosion as the cause of a big leak.

BP should have known about the problem years before that - if only because it had taped Dan Lawn's home phone calls.

I don't want readers to think BP is a British marauder unconcerned about the US.

The company is deeply involved in US democracy. Bob Malone, until last year the chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State co-chairman of the Bush re-election campaign.

Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's Arctic wildlife refuge to drilling by the BP consortium.

You can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it - the crude oil is still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because it was dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship.

But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island.

However the reports were bogus - the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volumes worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Nevertheless, we know BP cares about nature because it has lots of photos of solar panels in its annual reports - and it has painted every one of its gas stations green.

The green paint job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But CEO Tony Hayward knows it stands for the colour of the Yankee dollar.

In 2006, BP finally discovered the dangerous corrosion in the pipeline after running a "smart pig" through it. The "pig" is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though it had not done so for 14 years. Another "procedure not properly implemented."

By not properly inspecting the pipeline for over a decade, BP failed to prevent that March 2006 spill which polluted Prudhoe Bay. And cheaping out on remote controls for its oil well blow-out preventers appears to have cost the lives of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon.

But then failure to implement proper safety procedures has saved BP not millions but billions of dollars, suggesting that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.



From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/91000
 
The 'other' spill BP will be keeping quiet

Monday 31 May 2010Greg Palast

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's most recent spill.

Just last week over 100,000 gallons were lost at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. It still is.

Last Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after "procedures weren't properly implemented" by BP operators, say state inspectors.

"Procedures weren't properly implemented" is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Few in the US know that BP owns the controlling stake in the transalaska pipeline. Unlike with the Deepwater Horizon rig, BP keeps its name off the big pipe.

There's another reason for the company to keep its name off the pipe - its management of it stinks. The pipe is corroded, undermanned and "basic maintenance" is a term BP has never heard of.

How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it, bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

In one case, BP's CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of whistleblower Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe's tanker facility.

BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP's acts were "reminiscent of nazi Germany."

This was not an isolated case. Captain James Woodle, once in charge of the pipe's Valdez terminus, was blackmailed into resigning from the post when he complained of disastrous conditions there. The weapon used on Woodle was a file of faked evidence of marital infidelity. Nice guys, eh?

Two decades ago, I had the unhappy job of leading an investigation of British Petroleum's management of the Alaska pipeline system. I was working for the Chugach villages, the Alaskan natives who own the shoreline slimed by the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker grounding.

Even then, a courageous, steel-eyed government inspector, Dan Lawn, was hollering about corrosion all through the BP pipeline. I say "courageous" because Lawn kept his job only because his union's lawyers have kept BP from having his head.

It wasn't until 2006, 17 years later, that BP claimed to have suddenly discovered corrosion necessitating an emergency shutdown of the line.

It was pretty damn hard for BP to claim surprise in August 2006 that corrosion required shutting the pipeline. Five months earlier, Lawn had written his umpteenth warning when he identified corrosion as the cause of a big leak.

BP should have known about the problem years before that - if only because it had taped Dan Lawn's home phone calls.

I don't want readers to think BP is a British marauder unconcerned about the US.

The company is deeply involved in US democracy. Bob Malone, until last year the chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State co-chairman of the Bush re-election campaign.

Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP's care of Alaska's environment that he pushed again to open the state's Arctic wildlife refuge to drilling by the BP consortium.

You can go to Alaska today and see for yourself the evidence of BP's care of the wilderness. You can smell it - the crude oil is still on the beaches from the Exxon Valdez spill.

Exxon took all the blame for the spill because it was dumb enough to have the company's name on the ship.

But it was BP's pipeline managers who filed reports that oil spill containment equipment was sitting right at the site of the grounding near Bligh Island.

However the reports were bogus - the equipment wasn't there and so the beaches were poisoned. At the time, our investigators uncovered four-volumes worth of faked safety reports and concluded that BP was at least as culpable as Exxon for the 1,200 miles of oil-destroyed coastline.

Nevertheless, we know BP cares about nature because it has lots of photos of solar panels in its annual reports - and it has painted every one of its gas stations green.

The green paint job is supposed to represent the oil giant's love of Mother Nature. But CEO Tony Hayward knows it stands for the colour of the Yankee dollar.

In 2006, BP finally discovered the dangerous corrosion in the pipeline after running a "smart pig" through it. The "pig" is an electronic drone that BP should have been using continuously, though it had not done so for 14 years. Another "procedure not properly implemented."

By not properly inspecting the pipeline for over a decade, BP failed to prevent that March 2006 spill which polluted Prudhoe Bay. And cheaping out on remote controls for its oil well blow-out preventers appears to have cost the lives of 11 men on the Deepwater Horizon.

But then failure to implement proper safety procedures has saved BP not millions but billions of dollars, suggesting that the company's pig is indeed, very, very smart.



From: http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/content/view/full/91000

I hope you know that the Morning Star is the semi-official newspaper of the British Communist Party.

Morning Star (UK newspaper) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia@@AMEPARAM@@/wiki/File:Morning_Star_front_page_19_April_2010_.PNG" class="image"><img alt="Morning Star front page 19 April 2010 .PNG" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/97/Morning_Star_front_page_19_April_2010_.PNG"@@AMEPARAM@@en/9/97/Morning_Star_front_page_19_April_2010_.PNG
 
It's stated that the Morning Star picked up the piece from elsewhere.

The journalist writes for the Guardian or Observer sometimes and he's contributed to stuff on the BBC as well.
 
British saftey is as tight as thier teeth.

Only weeks ago, you asked for companies in the top 10 worldwide that were British and I said BP was one. I find it amazing that somebody in the oil industry didn't know that! As for the teeth joke, give it a fucking rest it is neither funny or factual and only reveals your lack of imagination and banality of wit. GED out of that!!
 
Only weeks ago, you asked for companies in the top 10 worldwide that were British and I said BP was one. I find it amazing that somebody in the oil industry didn't know that! As for the teeth joke, give it a fucking rest it is neither funny or factual and only reveals your lack of imagination and banality of wit. GED out of that!!

you got your ass kicked in that thread too and your bringing it up. BP is dogshit and that's your best company. We will skull drag those crocked teeth morons once we raid thier bank accounts.
 
I wonder how much BP's safety record in the US is purely down to the intrinsically evil nature of the British psyche - adopting a "couldn't care less what happens to the foreigners" posture?

You know, because multi national oil companies are usually so considerate and safety conscious when exploiting resources overseas.
 
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I wonder how much BP's safety record in the US is purely down to the intrinsically evil nature of the British psyche - adopting a "couldn't care less what happens to the foreigners" posture?

You know, because multi national oil companies are usually so considerate and safety conscious when exploiting resources overseas.

Well, certainly BP isn't going to be given any help due to its foreign status, the way we have bailed out our friggin' financial sector and no good, douchebag big three friggin' auto makers. My guess is most people will think that BP just didn't give a damn, though...
 
Well, certainly BP isn't going to be given any help due to its foreign status, the way we have bailed out our friggin' financial sector and no good, douchebag big three friggin' auto makers. My guess is most people will think that BP just didn't give a damn, though...

Pity this all happened in America really.

If a similar environmental disaster had occurred in, say, Africa, hardly anybody in the US or Europe would have given it a second thought.

Oh look, it did happen and we didn't.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell
 
Pity this all happened in America really.

If a similar environmental disaster had occurred in, say, Africa, hardly anybody in the US or Europe would have given it a second thought.

Oh look, it did happen and we didn't.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell

Well when you look at the attitude of Americans, it pretty much is conservatives telling BP, "geezus, man, get your act together!", and leftists saying "you evil pollutin' scumbags!! Do your drilling in the desert, and other foreign lands where it belongs!!!"
 
Pity this all happened in America really.

If a similar environmental disaster had occurred in, say, Africa, hardly anybody in the US or Europe would have given it a second thought.

Oh look, it did happen and we didn't.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/may/30/oil-spills-nigeria-niger-delta-shell


I was under the impression that a lot of these leaks and fires are caused by people deliberately syphoning off petrol and selling it, often using buckets and plastic containers to collect it. Certainly the one in 2008 that killed a hundred people was attributed to just that cause.

Having said that, there has been a disaster in the making in the Niger Delta for many years now, Nigerians are some of the smartest people on the planet and if they directed their energies away from 419 scams etc. they would be the leading economy in Africa. This in a country awash with oil, a good friend of mine Roland Akintunde could give you chapter and verse on the corruption in Nigeria.
 
Yeah, the left hates Alaska drilling even more than offshore. I saw on the news when the spill happened, that the oil spilled out into a containment ridge that had been dug out, so it wasn't causing any serious problems that might otherwise occur.
 
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