Stupak: BP Won't Let Congress Talk To Key Employees, but not ready to issue subpoenas now.
The chairman of a House panel investigating the Gulf oil spill said Friday that BP won't let members talk to several employees who may have critical information about what led to the catastrophe.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., told The Associated Press that BP PLC has cited its own investigation as its reason for denying access to the employees.
This is not the first time BP has tried to control governmental probes of BP. The excuse of BP's own internal investigation was used to wiggle its way onto a governmental probe team where it succeeded in flipping employees to recant prior statements unfavorable to BP. Congress does not need to give BP an inch: BP’s approval ratings of 6% is approaching Saddam Hussein’s 3%, a person that "our nation has gone to war against."
Please rec mothership.
In 2005, BP played big role in Alaska blowout preventer probe, the same piece of equipment " whose failure was critical to the catastrophe now unfolding in the Gulf." Two Alaska state agencies investigated whether a BP drilling contractor had routinely cheated on blowout preventer tests with BP knowledge. These two state agencies allowed BP, the company accused of wrongdoing, to be part of the investigative team that investigated BP. The reason for this incredibly cozy probe arrangement was that BP was conducting its own internal investigation so it would simply be convenient for its workers if they only had to appear once for a joint investigation. BP officials and its lawyers joined state investigators when witnesses were interviewed, and sometimes conducted these interviews in place of state investigators. Nearly "all 34 named witnesses were interviewed with at least one company official or attorney present," just like BP has its "minders" protect the Gulf workers from the pesky media. There were at least 3 times when witnesses confirmed allegations only to recant these statements after BP was allowed to confer with the witnesses privately. Not surprisingly, the state commission "ultimately ruled there was no widespread pattern of wrongdoing and declined to levy penalties."
While the oil industry has a few lawmakers in their greedy pockets, and has participated in drafting our laws and policies before, the current temper of the times is not in BP's favor in terms of obtaining such a cozy probe role. But control, access and delay work in BP's favor.
BP is all about beating the system. Sometimes it backfires. BP tried to beat the offshore drilling rules (now including Obama's moratorium) by drilling 5 miles off the coast of Alaska, but calling it onshore drilling because BP constructed an "artificial island" to house its drilling rig. Obama administration says no, BP's well is subject to new offshore drilling rules.
Then there is Jindal with his faux concerns. Jindal vetoes bill to open oil spill records. Last Friday, "Gov. Bobby Jindal rejected a bill Friday that would have required him to make public and to preserve all his office's documents involving the Deepwater Horizon oil spill." Jindal claims that such transparency would hurt the state in "future litigation" against BP. Easy solution: Most public records laws provide an exemption for pending litigation records.
If Jindal is truly worried about his litigation stance against BP, then why doesn't he scream about federal judges in the pockets of the oil industry instead of continually trying to blame President Obama for anything that happens or does not happen.
It has now been confirmed that Judge in drilling case held stock in oil company affected by moratorium according to financial disclosure statement released last Friday. The judge sold his stock interest in Exxon Mobil 14 days after this case was filed and less than 5 hours "before he struck down the moratorium:"
U.S. law requires judges to withdraw from any lawsuit in which they have a direct financial interest, however small. Rules also forbid them from hearing cases in which their impartiality might reasonably be questioned or in which their financial interests would likely be substantially affected.
...The court docket indicates that Feldman signed several orders before the sale.
Recall the issue before Judge Feldman was whether Obama's drilling moratorium inflicted an undue harm on the oil plaintiffs, local economy. The "energy companies who filed suit against the administration arguing the importance of oil drilling for the economy probably didn’t have to do much to convince Feldman."
Unfortunately, 58 percent of federal trial judges in oil-affected states have a stake in oil industry.
There is more BP News in tonight's Climate Change News Roundup:
BP NEWS
- It was reported last week that the BP oil mess is, not surprisingly, impacting emotional health as people are feeling "hopelessness, anxiety, stress, anger, depression and even suicidal thoughts among those most affected." Emotional well-being is not helped by the news reports that if not stopped, the well could keep gushing for 2-4 years. It is now reported that residents fear that a "toxic storm" could make "beach towns uninhabitable?": "Residents fear mass relocations should a hurricane kick the Gulf oil spill onto resort towns. ‘Hazmat cards’ are a hot commodity among residents, since they could be the key to return."
- BP is like having Bush around, screwing things up for people at every bend and turn: Dirty disposal of oil cleanup material: Review finds shoddy work by handlers of boom, other waste.
A leaky truck filled with oil-stained sand and absorbent boom soaked in crude pulls away from the beach, leaving tar balls in a public parking lot and a messy trail of sand and water on the main beach road. A few miles away, brown liquid drips out of a disposal bin filled with polluted sand.
...A spot check of several container sites by The Associated Press, however, found that's not always the case.
Along the northern Gulf coast, where miles of beaches have been coated with oil intermittently for two weeks, the check showed the handling and disposal of oily materials was haphazard at best.
A mound of oily sand sits in an uncovered waste container in a parking lot at the crown jewel of Alabama's park system, Gulf State Park. Water from the previous night's storm drips out of the bin into a brown pool on the asphalt.
- Waxman draft bill to regulate high-risk wells to prevent future oil spills and overhaul regulation of offshore and onshore drilling. (copy of bill here – pdf file).
The proposal would target "high-risk wells," which the draft defines as any operation that according to federal officials, "in the event of a blowout, could lead to substantial harm to public health and safety or the environment."
...The measure would bar the government from issuing a drilling permit to any high-risk well for a year after the law's enactment unless the applicant can demonstrate it has well control measures that "will prevent a blowout from occurring," that it has an effective oil spill response plan and that it can begin drilling a relief well within 15 days and can complete such a well within 90 days of a spill.
- BP's deadline to give facts on "conditions of BP's wellbore, reports of seabed oil leaks, the design and timeframe of relief wells and the size of the oil and gas reservoirs" is Friday, July 2nd.
This material would answer current worst-case scenario speculation about the state of BP’s Mocando wellbore – whether it is structurally compromised – and the ongoing attempts to dig relief wells. There is currently a 2,500-square-mile-and-growing oil slick in the area that is spreading to the shorelines, but little is publically known about the state of things under the surface, and the issue is rife with speculation.
The demand comes in a letter written by Congressman Edward J. Markey, chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee.
- BP 'Reporter' Flies Over Gulf Without Noting Slick. (Video from Rachel Maddow blog here.)
On his blog, a BP "reporter," Tom Seslar, describes a two-hour helicopter flight over the gulf with a team charting oil patches.
He somehow finds space in his post to describe the scope and vital importance of the oil industry and the beauty of the coastal marshes. He fits in a plug for the Louisiana Shrimp & Petroleum Festival scheduled for early September in Morgan City, La., and includes the festival’s promotional line describing "the unique way in which these two seemingly different industries work hand-in-hand culturally and environmentally" — with no hint of the deep irony, of course.
But he doesn’t include a single line describing the spreading gulf slicks that the flight is supposed to chart.
For more on BP's roving team of its own "reporters," check out this and this.
OIL GUSHER IMPACTS ON WILDLIFE
- Final tally for wildlife killed by BP will never be known, saving BP up to $50,000 per dead animal on the Endangered Species list, such as the Kemp's Ridley turtle.
Many dead animals could be sinking before being discovered in the vast Gulf. Autopsies of those found are usually inconclusive, because toxins are quickly metabolized by animal tissue... .
- Obama Administration confirms killing of turtles by burning, orders BP to stop.
Endangered sea turtles and other marine creatures are being corralled into 500 square-mile "burn fields" and burnt alive in operations intended to contain oil from BP's ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration confirmed today.
...The Obama administration, confirming the kills, said BP was under orders to avoid the turtles. "My understanding is that protocols include looking for wildlife prior to igniting of oil," a spokeswoman for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) said. "We take these things very seriously."
...More than 425 turtles are known to have died in the spill zone since 30 April, Noaa said.