Independent Commission Needed to Investigate BP

[amborin]

Government Collusion with BP to Block Information Flow Means We Need an Independent Commission to Handle Spill Response

Writing in Thursday’s New York Times, Jeremy W. Peters provides further documentation of what he titles "Efforts to Limit the Flow of Spill News". Perhaps the most damning evidence Peters provides comes from an effort by Florida Senator Bill Nelson to visit the Gulf with a group of reporters:
Last week, Senator Bill Nelson, Democrat of Florida, tried to bring a small group of journalists with him on a trip he was taking through the gulf on a Coast Guard vessel. Mr. Nelson’s office said the Coast Guard agreed to accommodate the reporters and camera operators. But at about 10 p.m. on the evening before the trip, someone from the Department of Homeland Security’s legislative affairs office called the senator’s office to tell them that no journalists would be allowed.
“They said it was the Department of Homeland Security’s response-wide olicy not to allow elected officials and media on the same ‘federal asset,’ ” said Bryan Gulley, a spokesman for the senator. “No further elaboration” was given, Mr. Gulley added.

Why would the Department of Homeland Security have a policy that prohibits elected officials and media being on the same ship in the Gulf? Is there any other explanation than a blatant attempt by the federal government to stifle reporting on conditions in the Gulf as they really exist, rather than as they have been presented by BP and federal "spokespeople"?

Consider also the efforts this week of NOAA Adminstrator Jane Lubchenco to delay work on scientific characterization of undersea oil plumes:
Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), yesterday repeated her plea for researchers to be cautious in collecting and interpreting evidence of underwater plumes of oil from the Deepwater Horizon well. Citing unusable data from some expeditions, she proposed a workshop to coordinate sampling methods before more cruises depart. But a prominent academic disagreed, saying that studying the plumes is too urgent to be delayed.
Lubchenco cautioned that oil samples needed to be chemically fingerprinted, because of the potential for confusion with natural oil seeping into the gulf. "There is a lot of potential out there for jumping to conclusions that may not be warranted," Lubchenco said at a research symposium in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, organized by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership. "We are all served best by proceeding in a careful, thoughtful, and quantifiable manner." Lubchenco appeared to be referring to her previous criticisms that the initial claim of a plume was premature.

The NOAA and Homeland Security actions, taken together, take on the appearance of the government working hand in hand with BP to prevent independent discovery and analysis of conditions in the Gulf on a real-time basis, so that the media and the public become dependent on information provided only by federal or BP sources.
But it’s not only the Feds who are doing BP’s bidding in preventing access. Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland was one of the first reporters on the scene in the Gulf, and a recurring theme in her reporting has been the collusion of local authorities with BP in restricting access to areas damaged by oil. Consider this account of one attempt to gain access to a spill area:

snip

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/53862


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During the recent weeks, when we learned that the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is refused access to research and measure the spill by British Petroleum (BP), and the US Coast Guard warns reporters, research scientists and engineers away from the area, stating that they are simply following orders --- from BP --- one might surmise the sovereignty of the United States of America has been ceded to an oil multinational.

It would certainly appear that way. Many complaints have been heard from a variety of scientists and engineers, eager to monitor, research and learn from this catastrophe, in order to better prepare, and avoid, future such occurrences.

But what of the past decade and BP's other adventures?

Well, in this study by the GAO from October of 2007 (p.54):

In another case, on June 28, 2006, CFTC brought an enforcement action against BP Products North America, Inc., alleging, among other things, that BP cornered the physical propane market and manipulated the price of propane in February 2004.63 Also on June 28, 2006, DOJ announced that a former BP trader had pled guilty to conspiracy to manipulate and corner the physical propane market.


snip

a recent article at the propulica.org site explains a bit of BP's sad record:

A series of internal investigations over the past decade warned senior BP managers that the company repeatedly disregarded safety and environmental rules and risked a serious accident if it did not change its ways.
The confidential inquiries, which have not previously been made public, focused on a rash of problems at BP's Alaska oil-drilling unit that undermined the company’s publicly proclaimed commitment to safe operations. They described instances in which management flouted safety by neglecting aging equipment, pressured or harassed employees not to report problems, and cut short or delayed inspections in order to reduce production costs. Executives were not held accountable for the failures, and some were promoted despite them.

They also include a study done (by James Baker III, no less, and several other fellows) on BP's refinery safety record. Not too confidence-inspiring, as one might expect.
Now the Telegraph, an excellent newspaper in the United Kingdom, mentions that BP's CEO (the one who yearns "..to get his life back."), Tony Hayward, very recently sold BP shares prior to the oil spill:
Tony Hayward cashed in about a third of his holding in the company one month before a well on the Deepwater Horizon rig burst, causing an environmental disaster.
Mr Hayward, whose pay package is £4 million a year, then paid off the mortgage on his family’s mansion in Kent, which is estimated to be valued at more than £1.2 million.


http://www.economicpopulist.org/

[Scuba]

1. I disagree....

...the Justice Department needs to investigate BP and the crimes they committed.

[maryf]

2. with all its connections to big oil? nt

[chill_wind]

3. K & R. n/t