Forget That $75 Million Liability Cap: Criminal Charges IN BP Spill Are "Very Likely"

[dahunan]

PLEASE hold them to it...

**and yes.. I wouldn't care one bit if this put BP on the bankruptcy block.. money and jobs do not allow you to destroy the environment - even if you were paid nearly 10 million dollars last year (while BP profits dropped 45 percent your pay rose 41 percent Mr BP CEO)

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http://www.businessinsider.com/crim...t-about-the-75-million-liabilities-cap-2010-5
As Deepwater investigations turn up evidence of negligence -- including a blowout preventer that was out of batteries and hadn't been properly tested -- it's becoming obvious that someone will face criminal charges. McClatchy quotes the former head of environmental crimes at the Justice Department, David M. Uhlmann: "There is no question there'll be an enforcement action, and it's very likely that there will be at least some criminal charges brought."
Criminal charges would put an axe through a $75 million cap on civil charges for oil pollution. The cap was alreadylooking flimsy as Obama asked Congress to set a higher limit.
Prosecutors in criminal cases can seek twice the cost of environmental and economic damages resulting from the spill, according to McClatchy.
So what's the damage?
Here's What You Need To Know About The $2.2 Trillion Gulf Economy >>

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/crim...-million-liabilities-cap-2010-5#ixzz0obUdriSI
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[ElFenix]

the blowout preventer had been tested just hours before the blowout and was working then. they think it may have been damaged during the blowout and partially worked.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7015310.html

 

[JSt0rm]

the blowout preventer had been tested just hours before the blowout and was working then. they think it may have been damaged during the blowout and partially worked.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7015310.html

Tell it to the judge. They are going down.

 

[Lemon law]

Excuse me, ELFenix evidently did not listen to the 60 Minutes report, that said when A pile of rubber that could only come from the blow out valve came up in the drill pipe, BP supervisors said full speed ahead anyway.

BP with about the worse safety record in the entire oil industry is not exactly going to emerge in good shape. BP may have some propaganda points, but facts are sharp objects that will cut them as they try to juggle them.

But still, we in America can only blame ourselves for allowing oil industry regulation to be subverted, and like Exon, BP may escape thanks to our courts.

And all that remains in that fast shuffle pissing contest will be the sad fact of a total environmental disaster we the tax payers will have to bail out.

And like Exon, we as Americans will manage to learn nothing at all as we stumble from one disaster to another. There is simply something unAmerican about learning a damn thing.

 

[werepossum]

the blowout preventer had been tested just hours before the blowout and was working then. they think it may have been damaged during the blowout and partially worked.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7015310.html

I heard the same thing on the radio from a worker on another part of the drilling rig when it exploded. He said the BOP had been successfully tested just hours before and that they were replacing the drilling fluids with seawater when the gas bubble struck. He also said these gas bubbles are fairly common (the reason there is a blow-out preventer there) but that no one there had ever seen anything like this, it was just far larger than the BOP was designed to handle. That suggests that the things we know about deep floor drilling and its extreme pressures may not be quite as correct as we think they are.

I can't imagine the Transocean guys continuing if they thought the BOP was damaged, since THEY (not BP) will be the ones to die if it fails - as indeed they did. Nonetheless BP probably faces significant exposure here. There are other safety precautions they did not take and argued were not necessary, which now appears completely untrue. And they assured the government that they could handle a spill much larger than the current spill, which they undeniably cannot handle. That suggests possible criminal neglect in the design and procedures even if they followed the law to the letter, as the law is not necessarily the standard one has to meet to be covered in lawsuits. One can follow the law to the letter and still be liable if circumstances require more than the code-required minimum.

And I wouldn't trust Sixty Minutes as far as I could throw their wrinkly asses.

 

[boomerang]

Well that'll teach them a lesson! Us too, but why look at the big picture?

 

[heymrdj]

.

And I wouldn't trust Sixty Minutes as far as I could throw their wrinkly asses.

QFMT

Then again I don't trust CBS, MSNBC, FOX or CNN either. I especially hate CNN now with "news and views". I don't give a fuck about what you think about a happening CNN, all I want is a simple list of facts, I'll make my own opinion thank you.

 

[JSt0rm]

QFMT

Then again I don't trust CBS, MSNBC, FOX or CNN either. I especially hate CNN now with "news and views". I don't give a fuck about what you think about a happening CNN, all I want is a simple list of facts, I'll make my own opinion thank you.

Do you not trust the first hand account?

How about BP. Do you trust them?

 

[her209]

the blowout preventer had been tested just hours before the blowout and was working then. they think it may have been damaged during the blowout and partially worked.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/7015310.html

I would take their word with a grain of salt.

 

[werepossum]

Do you not trust the first hand account?

How about BP. Do you trust them?

I trust BP as much as any other corporation with a huge amount of money at stake - which is to say, about as far as I trust Sixty Minutes. (Which is still more than I trust Waxman.) And the modified BOP is simply amazingly stupid and probably criminal. There are some problems here though. The Firedoglake story says tests on this particular BOP were "falsified for years", but the hot link is to a Huffy Puffy Post story where Michael Mason, an "oil industry whistleblower", claims he saw tests falsified "at least 100 times" in Alaska. The tests were in Alaska, Michael Mason was in Alaska. Although the Firedoglake story specifically says that tests on this particular BOP were falsified for years, there is absolutely nothing in the linked story to back that up. (Note also that Michael Mason's "whistleblowing", which got him fired, consisted of writing a letter protesting his employer's incorporation in another country to avoid taxes (a perfectly legal if reprehensible stratagem, by the way) rather than anything to do with his supposed witnessing of grave safety violations. He's not exactly a trustworthy witness. The story does tell of ONE employee (not of BP or Transocean) who falsified some tests; he was rightly fired and his company fined to recoup costs, but the investigators found no evidence of widespread fraud. Again, this was in Alaska and nothing to do with Transocean, although it was a BP well.

Also, this article does more to implicate Transocean than BP. As BP was unaware it had the wrong schematics, it appears that Transocean made the changes without approval.

One thing this whole affair does demonstrate is a burning need to immediately reform our oversight procedures. A required test of an electrical system requires that the electrical inspector be there to witness it, yet the government engineer merely asked for verification. There is absolutely no benefit in sending a highly trained and expensive engineer out to a drilling rig to ask to see papers documenting a test; those papers could easily be transmitted electronically. Instead the engineer needs to be present to witness the test and do the documentation himself, or at least oversee and certify its documentation. He (or another qualified inspector) needs to be there to inspect and verify the BOP before it is shipped, and to be present as it is installed as well, to make sure there are not corners cut as apparently happened here. If Waxman can be believed (not a limb I'd care to traverse, but it's possible) then probably the main reason that the BOP failed is because it had been altered far out of specification. That certainly sounds like a criminal act, although it may not be, but certainly the federal government's oversight should be thorough enough to prevent this kind of thing from happening. There is absolutely no reason that building a strip mall should get closer scrutiny than a potentially catastrophic offshore oil rig.

 

[sportage]

Im no fan of oil companies. But the public average Joe has to accept some blame too. You and me. After all... we demand low gas prices. During the GW era, when prices shot up near $5 a gal, we demanded the congress take action to control prices.
We want our cheap gas. BP just cut corners to give us what we demanded.
"Drill baby drill" has given us "pollute baby pollute". It’s not like we are innocent bystanders in all this. We might act like we are, but we have a lot of blame to take ownership of too. Our outrage is so typical...American.

 

[Thump553]

Reported on NBC Nightly News tonight was a brief interview with Professor Bea from Berkeley, who apparently has quite a background in oil and oil rigs. He is also the guy who led the post-Katrina study for the government. Below is a link to a pdf of a four page summary of his preliminary analysis. Some damning stuff there about corner cutting because they were behind schedule, improper design, etc. Interesting enough, his summary names BP and MMI but not Transocean, Haliburton or the manufacturer of the blowout preventer.

pdf:
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/S...20News/2010/BobBeaPreliminaryAnalysesrev5.pdf

And, if I'm doing it right, here is a link to the video:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032619/

 

[Ken g6]

Regardless of whether the BOP was in working order or not, as I recall, the rig was drilling deeper than its permit said it could. So they were already breaking the law that way.

 

[Hacp]

It looks like something fishy. The US needs to massively fine BP as a warning for other oil companies to be more careful. However, no new laws or regulation should be put in place. A big fine alone should be enough to scare companies into making sure the oil rigs are safe.

 

[dahunan]

It looks like something fishy. The US needs to massively fine BP as a warning for other oil companies to be more careful. However, no new laws or regulation should be put in place. A big fine alone should be enough to scare companies into making sure the oil rigs are safe.

I hear "sternly worded" documents and such have kept North Korea in check all these years? ()

 

[Hacp]

I hear "sternly worded" documents and such have kept North Korea in check all these years? ()

And if North korea ever tried to attack us, we'd obliterate it.

 

[dahunan]

I hear "sternly worded" documents and such have kept North Korea in check all these years? ()

And if North korea ever tried to attack us, we'd obliterate it.

tried to quote all three posts but not working easily

so. I assumed you were being sarcastic when you claimed BP should be fined... fines? there is not a single fine that could ever change what they have done. There comes a time when fines just aren't enough

This was CRIMINAL Negligence

What fine will repair this
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/44000/44006/gulf_tmo_2010137_lrg.jpg