More on the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil disaster and the BP environmental criminals.
ECOLOGICAL DISASTER
The following quotes are from October 2013 some 3 ½ years after the oil disaster.
Brad Robin: "
It's disturbing what we're seeing. We don't have any more baby crabs, which is a bad sign. We're seeing things we've never seen before"
Robin (oyster fisherman): "
We're seeing crabs with holes in their shells, other seafood deformities. The state of Louisiana oyster season opened on October 15, and we can't find any production out there yet. There is no life out there"
Kathy Birren: "
Our stone crab harvest has dropped off and not come back (…) We've seen fish with tar balls in their stomachs from as far down as the Florida Keys. We had a grouper with tar balls in its stomach last month. Overall, everything is down”
Dean Blanchard: "
We have big tar mats coming up on Elmers Island, Fouchon, Grand Isle, and Grand Terre."Every time we have bad weather we get fresh tar balls and mats".
Blanchard said his business generates only about 15 percent of what it did before the spill. Blanchard has seen shrimp with deformities. He attributes the deformities to BP's use of toxic dispersants.
Dr Ed Cake: "
The impacts of the Ixtoc 1 blowout in the Bay of Campeche in 1979 are still being felt," said Cake, referring to a large oil spill near the Mexican coast, "and there are bays there where the oysters have still not returned. My prediction is we will be dealing with the impacts of this spill for several decades to come and it will outlive me (…)
Mississippi recently opened their season, and their oyster fisherman are restricted to 12 sacks of oysters a day. But they can't even reach six. Thirty sacks would be a normal day for oysters - that was the previous limit"
Bobby Jindal: "
Three and a half years later, BP is spending more money - I want you to hear this - they are spending more money on television commercials than they have on actually restoring the natural resources they impacted"
But according to BP we don’t have to worry because: "
Seafood from the Gulf of Mexico is among the most tested in the world, and, according to the FDA and NOAA, it is as safe now as it was before the accident" -
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/featur ... 44754.html
HEALTH EFFECTS
According to a report from 2013: former spill cleanup workers are carrying biomarkers of many chemicals from the oil in their bodies, and women and children along Louisiana's coast are reporting health effects probably caused by the oil disaster.
Initial results of the WaTCH study among 150 women showed that 31% suffered from depression a year after the spill, which compares to a rate of “only” 20% in the nation's general population, and 17% among women in the area of Alaska affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
A study from the Columbia University aimed at health effects among the children of 1,437 parents living less than 10 miles from the coast found that (according to the parents) more than a third of the children suffered from physical or mental health symptoms.
The US FDA only tests for a small group of PAHs that can cause cancer. According to Robert Dickey, director of the FDA Gulf Coast Seafood Laboratory:
Folks are understandably concerned about the variety of different compounds that are out there in nature. But there are thousands of different compounds in oil and there's no way we can monitor and analyze for every one of them. What has been decided internationally is that we focus on the potentially cancer-causing compounds, and take a representative subset of those for which we have a lot of information. If we monitor for those, we know that's going to be representative of the potential mixture as a whole
.
Just to be on the safe side they won’t even bother to test for the chemicals in Corexit:
https://archive.is/j4X0M
Another study from 2011 by Tulane University tested 954 people living in the area (83% permanent residents). Nearly half of this group reported an increase in health problems consistent with exposure to chemicals – coughing, skin and eye irritation, and headaches. Dizziness, nausea and skin irritation were classified as sudden and severe.
These symptom numbers are significant.
The use of over-the-counter medication corresponded to the reported symptoms. More than 30% bought cough, cold or allergy medicine and other medicines for self-treatment:
http://www.labucketbrigade.org/sites/de ... INAL_1.pdf
A cohort study from 2016 of almost 2200 Louisiana women found "
high physical/environmental exposure was significantly associated with all 13 of the physical health symptoms surveyed, with the strongest associations for burning in nose, throat or lungs ; sore throat; dizziness and wheezing”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_co ... _oil_spill
WILLIAM ALLEN KRUSE - SUICIDED
William Kruse was hired by BP in 2010 for the clean-up of the Gulf of Mexico.
One day Kruse sent his deckhands off the boat to get some supplies and said he would meet them at the fuel dock. When he didn’t show: they discovered his corpse on the boat with a bullit in his head.
William Kruse was an extremely vocal type - a community leader who people looked up to. Kruse told fellow Captain Chris Garner about their work for BP:
“
Don’t try to rationalize it. . . . Just sign your name and get on your boat, and don’t try to tell anybody how to run the program, and don’t try to tell ’em what the local knowledge is. The cleanup is hopeless, and you’ll just tire yourself out trying to improve the situation (…) It’s just like prison”. Less than a week later he was death.
Kruse also spoke about his frustrations over the loss of business (due to the oil disaster) and BP didn´t pay him on time and owed him $70,000. Can anybody see a motive for killing William Kruse?
The police ruled a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I don’t think many people would plan to commit suicide, go to work, tell the crew to get supplies, and then blow their brains out:
https://web.archive.org/web/20170717184 ... iam-kruse/
HALLIBURTON & BP – DESTROYING EVIDENCE
In January 2014 Anthony Badalamenti was sentenced to one year probation (what kind of punishment is that?) because he instructed 2 Halliburton employees to destroy evidence. The corrupt judge said that the sentence of probation is very reasonable and told Badalamenti: "
I still feel that you're a very honorable man".
Halliburton cut its own deal with the Justice Department and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge for Badalamenti's misconduct. The company agreed to pay a $200,000 fine and contribute $55 million to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.
Halliburton settled plaintiff court cases for $1.1 billion.
On December 18, 2013 a jury convicted former BP drilling engineer Kurt Mix for destroying evidence.
BP well site leaders Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges (the deaths of 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon). Kaluza and Vidrine botched a key safety test and disregarded high pressure readings that were glaring signs of trouble before the blowout of BP's Macondo well:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/halliburton ... oil-spill/
BP – MORE DISASTERS:
BP has been involved in more oil disasters besides the Gulf of Mexico and Exxon Valdez.
By general consensus BP has the worst safety record of all oil companies since the 1960s. According to Jordan Barab of the OSHA: “
The only thing you can conclude is that BP has a serious, systemic safety problem in their company”.
According to a report by the Center for Public Integrity from 2010, in the last 3 years, BP refineries in Ohio and Texas have accounted for 97% of the "
egregious, willful" violations handed out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). BP ran up 760 "
egregious, willful" safety violations, while Sunoco and Conoco-Phillips each had 8, Citgo 2 and Exxon 1 comparable citation.
The definition of "
egregious, willful" is that an employer demonstrates an "
intentional disregard for the requirements of the [law], or showed plain indifference to employee safety and health".
After a 2005 BP refinery explosion in Texas City that killed 15 and injured 180, a Justice Department investigation found that the explosion was caused by "improperly released vapour and liquid". Years later OSHA found 270 cited safety violations that weren’t fixed, 439 new violations and fined BP for $87 million.
On April 2, 2010, a fire at the Tesoro Corp. refinery in Anacortes, Washington killed 7. The refinery had been cited in October 2008 for 17 serious safety violations, 14 of which were dropped after negotiations with the Washington State Department of Labor & Industries. Several other major incidents – including a pipe failure that caused $30 million in damage – occurred at the same BP refinery just months later:
https://www.publicintegrity.org/2010/05 ... ty-problem
The following examples I found on Wikipedia...
In December 1965, Britain's first oil rig, Sea Gem, capsized when two of the legs collapsed. Thirteen crew members were killed.
In 1967, the giant oil tanker Torrey Canyon foundered off the English coast. Over 32 million gallons of crude oil was spilled into the Atlantic and beaches of Cornwall and Brittany, causing Britain's worst-ever oil spill.
In September 1999, BP Exploration Alaska (BPXA) pleaded guilty to criminal charges for illegally dumping hazardous wastes, paying fines and penalties totalling $22 million. From 1993 to 1995 BP's contractor Doyon Drilling had dumped hazardous wastes on Endicott Island, Alaska. The firm illegally dumped waste oil, paint thinner and other toxic substances.
In March 2006, a BPXA oil pipeline in Prudhoe Bay leaked for 5 days causing the largest oil spill on Alaska's North Slope. In November 2007, BPXA pleaded guilty and was fined US$20 million.
In 2007, a BP pipeline poured 200,000 gallons of crude oil into the Alaskan wilderness. Investigators discovered BP was aware of corrosion but did nothing.
In 2003 California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD) filed a complaint against BP/ARCO, seeking $319 million in penalties for thousands of air pollution violations over an 8-year period. In January 2005, the agency filed a second suit against BP based on violations between August 2002 and October 2004.
In 2005 BP settled these cases for $25 million in cash penalties and $6 million in past emissions fees, while spending $20 million on environmental improvements and $30 million on asthma treatment.
On 25 April 2006, the OSHA fined BP more than $2.4 million for unsafe operations at the company's Oregon, Ohio refinery (violations similar to the 2005 Texas City explosion).
In 2007, 143 workers at the Texas City refinery were injured when a toxic substance was released at the plant. In March 2010, the federal judge awarded 10 of those workers less than $500,000 each. U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt said the plaintiffs didn’t prove BP was grossly negligent.
In August 2010, BP was charged with illegally emitting harmful air pollutants from its Texas City refinery for more than a month. BP admitted that malfunctioning equipment led to the release of over 530,000 pounds (240,000 kg) of chemicals into the Texas City air from 6 April to 16 May 2010.
In 2013 474 Galveston County residents living near the Texas City Refinery filed a $1 billion lawsuit against BP, accusing the company of "intentionally misleading the public about the seriousness" of a two-week release of toxic fumes which began on 10 November 2011.
In 2006, Colombian farmers reached a multimillion-dollar out-of-court settlement with BP for environmental damage caused by the Ocensa pipeline. The company benefitted from the regime of terror by Colombian government paramilitaries to protect the 450-mile (720 km) pipeline.
In 2009, another group of 95 Colombian farmers sued BP, because the Ocensa pipeline caused landslides, damage to soil, affecting crops, livestock, and contaminating water.
In 2008 BP and several other major oil refiners agreed to pay $422 million to settle a lawsuit for water contamination tied to the gasoline additive MTBE.
On 17 September 2008, a gas leak was discovered and one gas-injection well blown out at the Azeri oilfield, a part of the Azeri–Chirag–Guneshli (ACG) project, in the Azerbaijan sector of Caspian Sea:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP
