BP Violations and Spills
The Center for Public Integrity has some damning info about BP’s track record:
Two refineries owned by oil giant BP account for 97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors over the past three years, a Center for Public Integrity analysis shows. Most of BP’s citations were classified as “egregious willful” by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and reflect alleged violations of a rule designed to prevent catastrophic events at refineries.
Below, we see the various fines and violations of BP of the past 3 years:
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BP Violations, Proposed Penalites and Fines>
click for interactive map
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Chart Comparing Penalties by Producer
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Minerals Management Service also has a “Spilltracker” of sorts:
The MMS tracks spill incidents 1 barrel and greater in size of petroleum and other toxic substances resulting from Federal Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) oil and gas activities. MMS has historically produced counts and summaries for spills greater than or equal to 50 barrels (2,100 gallons). The tables below provide counts for spills of 50 barrels or greater, by year and by OCS Region. The counts are linked to summaries describing the circumstances surrounding each spill of 50 barrels or greater for that Region that year. One barrel (bbl) equals 42 U.S. gallons.
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June 6th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
I’d like to also know how much money BP spent in the last 3 years to lobby Washington DC to prevent tougher enforcement of safety violations and discourage development of alternative energy sources.
June 6th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Paul Craig Roberts comments on BP
6.4.10
video – begins at 3:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWnJa9XFwLo&feature=player_embedded
June 6th, 2010 at 2:11 pm
Wow. That’s just awful.
June 6th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
C, Why stop at three years? why not go back all the way?
Look when you want the free market guys, you get the free market guys. Don’t you voters see that?
The only thing dumber (well… more emotional) than voters are pundits. Joshua Green of the Atlantic doesn’t want smart people running things…
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/when-the-best-and-brightest-fail/57614/
… he’s positively Nixonian. I guess we should let the local Headbanger’s Ball line-waiters decide who’s qualified for technical positions in government . …compelete nonsense.
If Green expects perfection in all things, what’s he doing working for the Atlantic?
June 6th, 2010 at 3:33 pm
BP was an accident waiting to happen – and not really that long a wait!
June 6th, 2010 at 8:44 pm
[...] was cited by OSHA for 760 egregious willful violations between June 2007 and February [...]
June 6th, 2010 at 8:45 pm
If you go back to 2005, you find that they killed 15 workders in a refinery explosion in Texas City. OSHA imposed an $87M fine. Despite this, the Texas courts ruled that BP’s conduct was not bad enough to warrant imposing punitive damages, about the only thing these multinationals fear, since they control the governent regulators. Of course, punitive damages have been limited even more by the right wing on the theory that lawyers will get some of the damages as their fee; they’d rather see their kids poisoned and people die than have lawyers make a fee.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Refinery_(BP)
The latest episode here in TX is that the Tea Partiers are up in arms because the EPA may start enforcing air quality standards around refineries because the Texas State regulators don’t give a damn. The partiers say that if Texans want to poison themselves, it’s their God given right to do so and no socialists are going to take that right away.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_bi_ge/us_epa_vs_texas
June 6th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Spin: BP has less citations than other refineries.
Seriously though, that is an appalling safety record for which BP’s Board should be held accountable.
June 7th, 2010 at 2:14 am
Do you think that maybe, if we had built at least one refinery in the last 34 years, it would have taken some of the pressure off the existing facilities?
~~~
BR: That is a bogus data point.
We have dramatically expanded existing refineries in both physical size and refining capacity over the past 3 decades. It was cheaper and easier to do so than open a “new” refinery.
The reason we haven’t built new refineries is due to NIMBY — not in my back yard. They are loud, smelly, dangerous sites, and no one wants them anywhere near residential or retail commercial areas. And coastlands have become to desirable for residential housing.
But to claim that somehow not opening new refineries is relevant is sheer hackery.
June 7th, 2010 at 11:46 am
Gulf of Mexico : 1979 – It took 9 months to stop the leak after an explosion took place 160 ft deep.
Ixtoc I was an exploratory oil well being drilled by the semi-submersible platform Sedco 135F in the Bay of Campeche of the Gulf of Mexico, about 100 km (62 mi) northwest of Ciudad del Carmen, Campeche in waters 50 m (160 ft) deep On 3 June 1979, the well suffered a blowout resulting in the third largest oil spill and the second largest accidental spill in history.
See video :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo&feature=player_embedded
June 7th, 2010 at 12:26 pm
BR
Call it “bogus”, “hackery” or whatever you like but the fact is, maintenance is far more likely to be done when there is excess capacity. It’s not hard to see the state of our production when you look at finished gasoline imports since the 1970′s.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MGFIMUS1&f=M
You’re right about the NIMBYS though. But no mention of regulations?
You can pick and choose what’s relevant if you like but it doesn’t portray ” The Big Picture” very well.
June 13th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
[...] in response to a modern day British corporation with a long and well known record of callous disregard for U.S. laws and regulat…, the current Tea Party Movement has little if nothing to say about [...]