Thursday, October 28, 2010

Huge Oil Plumes

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Reappearance of Huge Plumes of Oil is Making It Hard to Pretend that the Problem Has Disappeared


There is a flood of information coming out on the Gulf oil spill.

Why?

The reappearance of huge plumes of oil is making it hard to pretend that it has all gone away.

Here's a roundup of some of the Gulf oil headlines from just the last 4 days:

And Frontline and ProPublica released a new documentary called The Spill which says:

  • BP has a terrible track record of safety
  • Workers had "an exception degree of fear" and worried about dying at BP's texas oil refinery, and BP's own plant manager pleaded for safety measures to be implemented. Headquarters said no.
  • BP's giant Alaska facility was only designed to last until 1987, and then was supposed to be torn down. But instead, according to one of BP's Alaska workers: "They're going to run everything to failure".
  • BP's philosophy is: "How many lives can we afford to lose before we have to deal with this?"
  • BP stopped doing a basic oil pipeline safety measure, which caused a huge spill in Alaska
  • BP used too few inspectors, and used unqualified inspectors
  • The giant Thunderhorse platform fell over because a key part was installed backwards
  • Internal documents show BP engineers trying to find ways to cut costs and cut corners, so BP bypassed numerous normal safety measures.
  • When Tony Hayward took over as CEO, he said he was going to increase safety ... at the same time he insisted on substantial new cost cutting measures.
  • Because BP is not being reined in or restricted, and still has a cost-cutting culture, giant, future accidents will occur.

But as Greg Palast notes, The Spill is a whitewash sponsored by Chevron, rehashing information which Palast and others reported on years ago, and falsely implying that other oil companies have stellar safety records.

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