Tag Archives: deepwater

BP convicted of gross negligence in Deepwater Horizon spill, really salty about it

by IssacTenreajbyw Posted on September 4, 2014

BP convicted of gross negligence in Deepwater Horizon spill, really salty about it

By

4 Sep 2014 3:46 PM

Share

Share

BP convicted of gross negligence in Deepwater Horizon spill, really salty about it

×

Today, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier of the New Orleans federal court issued a ruling finding BP guilty of gross negligence in the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010. Halliburton and Transocean, companies also involved in operating the rig, received lesser smackdowns in the same ruling. BP, of course, will be appealing the decision, because why not drag these legal proceedings out for a few more years!

The ruling has coincidentally come about at the same time as the Society of Environmental Journalists conference — also taking place in New Orleans — where Geoff Morrell, BP’s vice president of U.S. communications, had a lot of crybaby-ish things to say about the media’s handling of BP’s behavior in the aftermath of the crisis.

In that regard, we imagine* that the handing down of this decision may have gone a little like this:

Judge Carl Barbier: So listen … four years ago, y’all fucked up. Big time. You know this!

BP: PROVE IT.

CB: What — ? That’s really not my job. Do you know how the U.S. judicial system works? I’m the judge, you morons — I don’t have to prove shit. But just to review: your Deepwater Horizon rig spilled over 200 million gallons of oil, contaminated 650 miles of coastline and 87,000 square miles of the Gulf, and killed 11 people. Not to mention, you impacted the livelihoods of 20 million people in the United States alone.

Halliburton and Transocean, in unison: Okay, fair, but really not our fault.

CB: I’ll get to you bozos in a minute. Anyway, BP, I’m aware this isn’t your first federal court rodeo. You’ve already pleaded guilty to no fewer than 14 federal charges, including 11 for manslaughter, and also one for deliberately lying about the size of the oil spill. And now we’ve spent the past few months hearing — in detail — how your enormous screw-up­ has been detrimental to the environment, food system, and economy of the Gulf region. Do you have anything to say for yourself?

BP: Thank you for asking. We’ve set aside $46 billion to cover all of the cleanup, legal fees, and penalties that we may or may not be responsible for. That’s a lot of money! It should be more than enough.

CB: It will definitely not be even close to enough, but that’s on you. On that note, I find you guilty of reckless conduct and gross negligence in setting off the Deepwater Horizon disaster, for which you are hereby levied a penalty of $18 billion.

BP: Wow. WOW.

HB: DO YOU WANT SOME ICE FOR THAT BUUUURRRRRNNNNNN??!!

TO: HEY BP CAN YOU LOAN ME A COUPLE BIL?? OH WAIT JUST KIDDING YOU BROKE AS F –

CB: Seriously, you two — I’ll get to you in a minute.

BP: Are you kidding me with that number? I am prepared to offer you exactly $3.5 billion.

CB: Does this look like a goddamn Moroccan marketplace to you, BP? Are you seriously haggling with me right now?

HB and TO: Take that penalty and take a seat!

BP: You both need to shut up.

CB: I’m going to have to break character and agree with BP on this one. Transocean and Halliburton, I find you each guilty of negligent conduct.

BP: HA!

CB: … and you don’t have to pay anything. God damn it.

BP: WHAT.

HB: Already took care of it. (High-fives TO.)

CB: I really do just hate all of you, for the record.

*In case you couldn’t tell (!), this exchange is fictional.

Source:
BP Found Grossly Negligent in 2010 Spill; Fines May Rise

, Bloomberg.

Find this article interesting?

Donate now to support our work.Share

Please

enable JavaScript

to view the comments.

Get stories like this in your inbox

AdvertisementAdvertisement

More:  

BP convicted of gross negligence in Deepwater Horizon spill, really salty about it

Posted in alo, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, KTP, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BP convicted of gross negligence in Deepwater Horizon spill, really salty about it

BP won’t pay for Gulf oil spill research

by NapoleonWND Posted on April 28, 2014

BP won’t pay for Gulf oil spill research

By

Visit St. Pete/Clearwater

Who’ll be watching out for the dolphins?

If BP let a bull loose in a China shop, the company would take umbrage at the usual “you break it, you bought it” policy.

The oil giant is refusing to pay for some of the ongoing research into the environmental effects of its 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, forcing the federal government to spend money on the needed science — money that had been earmarked for oil spill emergencies. The Financial Times reports:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency, wrote to BP last July seeking almost $148m to pay for “injury assessment and restoration planning activities”, including funding of $2.2m for research into the recovery of the coastal wetlands, more than $10m for dolphins and whales and $22m for oysters.

In October, BP replied to the NOAA request rejecting the majority of those requests, saying it was concerned over “the lack of visibility and accountability” in the process, and the unwillingness of the [Natural Resource Damage Assessment] trustees, which are US federal agencies and coastal state governments, to engage in technical discussions of the substantive issues.

BP boasts that it has paid more than $1 billion for damage assessment so far, as if that were some kind of an altruistic act. The company claims that the government is withholding scientific data produced during the assessment from its attorneys — data it says would prove that its oil spill wasn’t really all that bad.

The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, a Louisiana agency involved with some of the post-spill studies, says much more research is needed. “There has never been a spill like this one, the largest, most expensive and the longest active spill response, and a similar level of effort needs to be applied to assessment and restoration,” Kyle Graham, the authority’s executive director, told The Times-Picayune. “We are likely years away from being comfortable with the assessment.”

The fact that BP is having to pay out billions in compensation to Gulf area businesses allegedly hurt by the spill probably isn’t making the company feel more generous.


Source
BP refuses to pay for more research on Deepwater Horizon oil spill effects on dolphins, turtles, oysters, The Times-Picayune
BP refuses to fund Gulf oil spill studies, The Financial Times

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Source article: 

BP won’t pay for Gulf oil spill research

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, Dolphin, FF, GE, LAI, ONA, organic, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BP won’t pay for Gulf oil spill research

BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

by AdelaidaH Posted on December 19, 2013

BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

By

NOAA

In May 2010, as BP prepared to try to staunch the flow of oil from beneath the wrecked Deepwater Horizon rig by dumping mud over the blowout, some of the company’s engineers knew the effort was bound to fail. But the mud-dumping plan, codenamed Top Kill, moved forward anyway as the world’s media watched on. Sure enough, Top Kill failed to staunch the leak.

One of the engineers who knew the effort would fail, Kurt Mix, later tried to keep that a secret from investigators. When Mix found out that his iPhone was about to be seized, he deleted more than 100 text messages — messages such as “Too much flowrate – over 15,000.” In that message, Mix was warning a colleague that 15,000 barrels of oil was leaking every day, which was too much oil for the operation to handle, and three times the flow rate that BP had stated publicly.

The presumably panicked decision to delete the texts on Wednesday led to the 52-year-old Texan being found guilty by a jury of one charge of obstruction of justice — a charge that carries a maximum penalty of 20 years imprisonment. He avoided conviction on a second, similar charge. His attorneys vowed to appeal. From the AP:

Mix, who was arrested in April 2012, was the first of four current or former BP employees charged with spill-related crimes and the first of them to be tried.

BP took corporate responsibility for its role in the catastrophe earlier this year, pleading guilty in January to manslaughter charges for the workers’ deaths and agreeing to pay a record $4 billion in penalties. But none of the top executives at the London-based oil giant have been charged with crimes.

David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan law professor and former chief of the Justice Department’s environmental crimes section, said Mix was a “sympathetic defendant” because his conduct seemed relatively minor in the context of a disaster that killed 11 workers and spewed millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf. Uhlmann, however, said the Justice Department appropriately has a “zero-tolerance policy” for those who destroy evidence in a criminal investigation.

“The Gulf oil spill was the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages from his iPhone,” he said. “The government was justified in seeking charges, but there’s a proportionality problem here.”

Props to the feds for going after BP wrongdoers. But it would sure be nice to see some senior execs held accountable for the 2010 disaster, which is still affecting the Gulf of Mexico and its fishermen and shoreline communities.


Source
Ex-BP engineer convicted on 1 obstruction charge, Associated Press
Former BP Engineer Arrested for Obstruction of Justice in Connection with the Deepwater Horizon Criminal Investigation, U.S. Department of Justice

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

View original post here:  

BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BP engineer found guilty of obstructing justice

BP whines some more about how rough life is

by Vladyslava7u1 Posted on August 13, 2013

BP whines some more about how rough life is

By John Upton

Not that big a deal, really.

BP killed 11 workers when the Deepwater Horizon rig blew up, and then it obstructed government investigators. That’s not editorializing — the company pled guilty to manslaughter and obstruction charges. Since you can’t imprison a corporation, it was punished in other ways. One of those punishments was a temporary ban on getting new federal contracts.

Never one to miss an opportunity to publicly whine about how unfair the world is for an explosion-prone petrochemical giant, BP sued the U.S. government on Monday over the suspension, arguing in court that it is arbitrary, capricious, and “an abuse of discretion.” From Fuel Fix:

BP … wants a judge to order the EPA to lift the suspension and allow BP to bid for and secure new government contracts.

The suspension, called a debarment, affects only new federal contracts, not existing ones. Because of it, however, BP has lost out on potentially billions of dollars of business with the U.S. government.

Among other things, the company was ineligible for new contracts worth up to $1.9 billion to provide fuel to the government this year.

Our hearts are just bleeding.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

See original article here:  

BP whines some more about how rough life is

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, Dolphin, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BP whines some more about how rough life is

Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

by Christinef76 Posted on August 1, 2013

Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

By John Upton

Shutterstock

Coming soon, to a coastline near you …

Wind developers have accepted invitations to the government’s New England offshore wind energy party.

There are currently no offshore wind farms in U.S. waters, but the Obama administration intends to change that. On Wednesday, the government auctioned off the right to construct turbines in nearly 165,000 acres of federal waters south of Massachusetts and Rhode Island — the first of many offshore auctions the Interior Department has planned.

The brown bits should get turbines within a few years.

Hedge fund-backed Deepwater Wind LLC beat out two other bidders at the auction, agreeing to pay $3.8 million for the development rights. The Providence, R.I.-based company said it could spend as much as $6 billion building up to 200 wind turbines in the area plus transmission lines, with construction possibly beginning in 2017 and power production in 2018.

From Bloomberg:

“We’re hoping that this year and next year we can start putting the power purchase agreements together,” [Deepwater CEO Jeff] Grybowski said. The project will likely be built in phases with 200 megawatts to 400 megawatts of generating capacity, he said. …

Deepwater hasn’t selected a wind turbine vendor and plans to use “at least 6-megawatt turbines, and possibly larger,” Grybowski said.

The Interior Department’s next offshore auction will be on Sept. 4, for nearly 113,000 acres off the coast of Virginia. On the auction block later this year and next: areas off the coasts of Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Originally posted here:

Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

Posted in Anchor, Dolphin, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, wind energy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Offshore auction signals start of wind bonanza

Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

by OfeliawWeeks Posted on July 19, 2013

Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

By John Upton

kris krüg

Somebody ordered a couple dozen more of these?

It’s open season for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

A five-month moratorium on deep-sea drilling was imposed after the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, but those days are long gone. Now a record-breaking number of rigs are coming to the Gulf to tap gas and oil beneath the sea floor.

More than 60 rigs are expected to be operating in waters deeper than 1,000 feet by the end of 2015, up from 36 today, Bloomberg reports:

Demand is driven in part by exploration successes in the lower tertiary, a geologic layer about 20,000 feet below the sea floor containing giant crude deposits that producers are only now figuring out how to tap. Companies such as Chevron Corp. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp. must do more drilling to turn large discoveries into producing wells — as many as 20 wells for each find.

“The Gulf had more than its fair share of discoveries,” Chris Beckett, chief executive officer at Pacific Drilling SA, said in an interview. “Right now, the Gulf is the fastest growing deep-water region in the world.”

The revival will add to surging crude oil supplies from the U.S. shale boom, with Gulf production climbing 23 percent to 1.55 million barrels a day by December 2014 from 1.26 million in March, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

What could go wrong?

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

See original: 

Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

Posted in Anchor, Dolphin, FF, G & F, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Dozens of new oil rigs planned for Gulf of Mexico

BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

by oks23po Posted on January 14, 2013

BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

By Philip Bump

British Petroleum, former record-holder for “most inept at U.S. offshore drilling,” has a favor to ask of the government. Yeah, sure, the government says that 4.9 million barrels of oil were spilled when the Deepwater Horizon went blooey, but if we could agree it was actually more like, oh, 4.1 million, that would save BP a few bucks.

From FuelFix:

The U.S. government has asserted that the well discharged 4.9 million barrels of oil, or 206 million gallons. BP stated again in its filing Friday that it believes the spill was significantly smaller, though it hasn’t publicly provided its own estimate.

With a finding of gross negligence, the 4.9-million-barrel figure would carry a maximum Clean Water Act fine of more than $21 billion.

How big a dent would this obviously scientifically accurate adjustment make?

Such a ruling could reduce BP’s fine by as much as $3.4 billion if the court were to rule that BP acted with gross negligence when its Macondo well blew out 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana, leading to the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

BP doesn’t understand why this little incident has to be so expensive.

Data for 2012 hasn’t yet been released, but in 2011, BP only managed to pull in about $24 billion in profit. So you can see that having to pay for all of the damage that the company actually did would be a major imposition. That’s an extra $3.4 billion the company could be putting toward drilling more holes in the ocean floor, after all, and we certainly wouldn’t want it to stop doing that.

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Continued here:  

BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

Posted in GE, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on BP kinda hoping the government can ignore a few hundred million barrels of spilled Gulf oil

The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

by johnsmithwindows Posted on January 3, 2013

The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

By Philip Bump

Ever wonder how much it costs to have a subsidiary role in leaking millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 people and countless sea animals and gutting the regional economy for months on end?

It costs $1.4 billion.

Transocean has agreed to pay a total of $1.4 billion in civil and criminal fines and penalties for its role in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster in 2010, the Department of Justice just announced.

Under a federal court settlement, it will also plead guilty to violating the Clean Water Act. And Transocean will have to take steps to improve safety and emergency response procedures on its drilling rigs.

So there you go. $1.4 billion. Write a check, mail it to Washington, and get to polluting. That’s how capitalism works.

Source

Transocean to Pay $1.4 Billion in Gulf Spill Accord, The New York Times

Philip Bump writes about the news for Gristmill. He also uses Twitter a whole lot.

Read more:

Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Also in Grist

Please enable JavaScript to see recommended stories

Source: 

The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill

Posted in GE, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The feds fine Transocean $1.4 billion for Deepwater spill