BP's OTHER Spill this Week
by Greg Palast for Buzzflash.comFriday, May 28 2010
Oil spill residue, Chenega, Alaska©1997James Macalpine-PIF
With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the
press for British Petroleum's latest spill, just this week: over
100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand
used to be a lot. Still is. On 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 Americans know that BP owns the controlling stake in the
trans-Alaska pipeline; but, unlike with the Deepwater Horizon, BP
keeps its Limey name off the Big Pipe. There's another reason to keep their name off the Pipe: their
management of the pipe stinks. It's corroded, it's undermanned and
"basic maintenance" is a term BP never heard of. BP: Red, White and Bush I don't want readers to think BP is a foreign marauder unconcerned
about America. The company is deeply involved in our democracy. Bob Malone, until
last year the Chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State
Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign. Mr. 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 (ANWR) 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 they were 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 they have lots of
photos of solar panels in their annual reports - and they've painted
every one of their 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 color 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 they 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 their 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, suggests that the company's pig
is indeed, very, very smart.