EPA is contemplating sanctions on BP that would billions in $$$ & end drilling in Fed'l oil fields

[Pirate Smile]

These sanctions are NOT the same as just forcing BP to pay for all the clean up and damages. This is IN ADDITION to those costs.

The Daily Beast:

EPA Mulls Sanctions on BP

Someone’s going to have to break the news to Rand Paul: The Environmental Protection Agency is mulling sanctions against BP that would prevent the oil company from receiving government contracts—a move ProPublica says could cost the company “billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.” The EPA has already suspended negotiations with BP over whether it will be allowed federal contracts in the future until it learns more about the Gulf spill; it is allowed to place sanctions on a company in cases of fraudulent, reckless or criminal misconduct.

Read it at ProPublica:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/cheat-sheet/item/epa-mulls-sanctions-on-bp/gulf-disaster/?cid=hp:mainpromo1

From ProPublica:

EPA Officials Weigh Sanctions Against BP’s U.S. Operations
by Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica - May 21, 2010 1:27 pm EDT



Officials at the Environmental Protection Agency are considering whether to bar BP from receiving government contracts, a move that would ultimately cost the company billions in revenue and could end its drilling in federally controlled oil fields.

Over the past 10 years, BP has paid tens of millions of dollars in fines and been implicated in four separate instances of criminal misconduct that could have prompted this far more serious action. Until now, the company's executives and their lawyers have fended off such a penalty by promising that BP would change its ways.

That strategy may no longer work.

Days ago, in an unannounced move, the EPA suspended negotiations with the petroleum giant over whether it would be barred from federal contracts because of the environmental crimes it committed before the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Officials said they are putting the talks on hold until they learn more about the British company's responsibility for the plume of oil that is spreading across the Gulf.

The EPA said in a statement that, according to its regulations, it can consider banning BP from future contracts after weighing "the frequency and pattern of the incidents, corporate attitude both before and after the incidents, changes in policies, procedures, and practices."
Several former senior EPA debarment attorneys and people close to the BP investigation told ProPublica that means the agency will re-evaluate BP and examine whether the latest incident in the Gulf is evidence of an institutional problem inside BP, a precursor to the action called debarment.

Federal law allows agencies to suspend or bar from government contracts companies that engage in fraudulent, reckless or criminal conduct. The sanctions can be applied to a single facility or an entire corporation. Government agencies have the power to forbid a company to collect any benefit from the federal government in the forms of contracts, land leases, drilling rights, or loans.
The most serious, sweeping kind of suspension is called "discretionary debarment" and it is applied to an entire company. If this were imposed on BP, it would cancel not only the company's contracts to sell fuel to the military but prohibit BP from leasing or renewing drilling leases on federal land. In the worst cast, it could also lead to the cancellation of BP's existing federal leases, worth billions of dollars.

http://www.propublica.org/feature/epa-officials-weighing-sanctions-against-bps-us-operations

[polichick]

1. "Contemplating" - big deal. I'll believe it when they're done contemplating and DO IT. nt

[NYC_SKP]

2. K & R! nt

:kick:

[Cha]

3. Gotta do it..that's what they understand. nt

[Dappleganger]

4. Whatever they do, it better have teeth.

And choke the living hell right out of their drilling aspirations in the Gulf.