BP Spills Promises More Easily Than It Keeps Them

In a 2005 settlement with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, BP pledged to fix the multiple hazards that exploded part of its Texas City refinery and killed 15 people.

Four years later, OSHA alleged more than 700 safety breaches, hundreds of them violations of the 2005 agreement, and proposed a record $87.4 million fine.

BP says it’s been working as hard as it can to make the refinery safe and is appealing the OSHA findings.

That BP’s promises to do the right thing have fallen short should come as no surprise.

A corroded BP pipeline spilled more than 250,000 gallons of crude into Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay in 2006, followed by a second spill a few months later, which shut down the operation.

Dumping Waste

In 2000, BP admitted dumping hazardous wastes onto Alaska’s North Slope. In 2001 it vowed to clean up air emitted from eight of its U.S. refineries in a settlement with the Justice Department over Clean Air Act violations. And yet the Environmental Protection Agency cited one of those plants, in Indiana, for polluting the air again in 2007.
The company has been prosecuted for environmental crimes time and again. It has been sued by people who lost family members to BP’s carelessness and by workers hurt or sickened.

Each time BP executives are so very sorry. Each time they promise to install safety measures and to monitor the result and to never ever do such a thing again. And then it happens again.

BP gets green points for its investment in alternative, renewable energy sources. But that can’t make up for its dismal safety and environmental record at its other plants...

BP Spills Promises More Easily Than It Keeps Them: Ann Woolner - BusinessWeek

 

In the months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig sank in a ball of fire in the Gulf of Mexico, the company had four close calls on pipelines and facilities it operates in Alaska, according to a letter from two congressmen obtained by ProPublica.

In that letter, dated Jan. 14, 2010, Reps. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted that the company's efforts to cut costs could imperil safety at BP facilities.

Between September 2008 and November 2009, three BP gas and oil pipelines on Alaska's North Slope ruptured or clogged, leading to a risk of explosions, the letter said. A potentially cataclysmic explosion was also avoided at a BP gas compressor plant, where a key piece of equipment designed to prevent the buildup of gas failed to operate, and the backup equipment intended to warn workers was not properly installed.

The letter was addressed to BP's president of Alaskan operations, John Mingé. The congressmen have been investigating BP's safety and operations since 2006, when a 4,800-gallon oil spill temporarily shut down the Prudhoe Bay drilling field pipeline.

Congressmen raised concerns about BP safety before Gulf oil spill | Environment | guardian.co.uk