"BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates." (Greg Palast)

[kpete]

Slick Operator: The BP I've Known Too Well

Wednesday 05 May 2010

by: Greg Palast, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis



......... BP caused devastation in Alaska is exactly the way BP is now sliming the entire Gulf Coast.

Tankers run aground, wells blow out, pipes burst. It shouldn't happen, but it does. And when it does, the name of the game is containment. Both in Alaska, when the Exxon Valdez grounded, and in the Gulf last week, when the Deepwater Horizon platform blew, it was British Petroleum that was charged with carrying out the Oil Spill Response Plans (OSRP), which the company itself drafted and filed with the government

What's so insane, when I look over that sickening slick moving toward the Delta, is that containing spilled oil is really quite simple and easy. And from my investigation, BP has figured out a very low-cost way to prepare for this task: BP lies. BP prevaricates, BP fabricates and BP obfuscates.

.....................

This just in: Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews, who, therefore, poured in too small a cement cap for the additional pressure caused by the extra depth. So, it blew.

Why didn't Halliburton check? "Gross negligence on everyone's part," said Becnel. Negligence driven by penny-pinching, bottom-line squeezing. BP says its worker is lying. Someone's lying here, man on the platform or the company that has practiced prevarication from Alaska to Louisiana.

more:
http://www.truthout.org/slick-operator-the-bp-ive-known-too-well59178

[leftstreet]

1. Maybe explains all the BP commercials they've run over the years

I remember seeing them all the time. Which made no sense given that they weren't really selling anything in particular to we the peons.

Just lots of happy, fuzzy, feelgoody PR.

Creepy

[Newest Reality]

2. Hence,

one primarily treats with utter skepticism whatever news appears to obscure the true nature of this catastrophe, especially if it issues from the PR-toothed mouth of a corporate oil giant as it lumbers defiantly over the resulting spoils of its egregious malfeasance gaping like a huge wound pouring its black, tainted blood into the Gulf.

This oil gusher/geyser/eruption event is another underscore as to why Net neutrality is a critical issue for all of us. No matter what we do with the information we can share and garner, it must be available and flow freely so that we can discern the truth and act from it. Nothing less will due in a time of strict media control, spin, propaganda, and corporate agendas that loom over us like megalithic monsters filling our heads with nightmares of artificial, mind-numbing nonsense and odes to unbridled consumption for the sake of profit and power.

[Vinnie From Indy]

10. Well done!

Cast your pearls before swine and some ultimately will appreciate it! Cheers!

[arikara]

13. Sometimes I wish

we could rec individual posts.

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Does this guy know what happens to booms in heavy seas like...

they just had down there?

[BrklynLiberal]

4. BP, Halliburton, Transocean, and MSS, perhaps Salazar, Cheney for sure...

All should be held responsible for this disaster...each played an essential part in its inevitablity.
Mostly out of greed, and perhaps in some cases out of ignorance or stupidity...but it is CRIMINAL Negligence...
and should be treated as such

[rudy23]

5. And BP can buy any election they want to thanks to the recent Supreme Court ruling

But I'm sure the Democrats are on that.

[emilyg]

6. They gave a buig heap of money to Obama.

[flyarm]

7. You bet they have and it was reported on our Fla news tonight! eom

[pnorman]

8. From what I recall from an article cited here on DU,

Big Oil contributed to both parties, but it was 72%-28%. I doubt that BP differed all that much from those numbers.

[amborin]

9. yes, they did, and Obama's choice of Salazar, with his close ties

to the oil industry and advocacy of offshore drilling was terrible

KO tonite hosted Defenders of Wildlife, who said Salazar had not conducted an environmental impact study of the BP project.....

[Kalun D]

11. HUGE Error

""Becnel tells me that one of the platform workers has informed him that the BP well was apparently deeper than the 18,000 feet depth reported. BP failed to communicate that additional depth to Halliburton crews""

they were at 35,000 ft from the ocean surface, so over twice as far down as the 18,000.

[flyarm]

12. Deep beneath the Gulf, oil may be wreaking havoc

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100505/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

Deep beneath the Gulf, oil may be wreaking havoc


Deep beneath the Gulf, oil may be wreaking havoc

By CAIN BURDEAU and HARRY R. WEBER
Associated Press Writers


NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- The oil you can't see could be as bad as the oil you can.

While people anxiously wait for the slick in the Gulf of Mexico to wash up along the coast, globules of oil are already falling to the bottom of the sea, where they threaten virtually every link in the ocean food chain, from plankton to fish that are on dinner tables everywhere.

"The threat to the deep-sea habitat is already a done deal - it is happening now," said Paul Montagna, a marine scientist at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi.

Hail-size gobs of oil the consistency of tar or asphalt will roll around the bottom, while other bits will get trapped hundreds of feet below the surface and move with the current, said Robert S. Carney, a Louisiana State University oceanographer.

Oil has been gushing into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of at least 200,000 gallons a day since an offshore drilling rig exploded last month and killed 11 people. On Wednesday, workers loaded a 100-ton, concrete-and-steel box the size of a four-story building onto a boat and hope to lower it to the bottom of the sea by week's end to capture some of the oil. Crews also set fires at the worst spots on the surface Wednesday to burn off oil.

Scientists say bacteria, plankton and other tiny, bottom-feeding creatures will consume oil, and will then be eaten by small fish, crabs and shrimp. They, in turn, will be eaten by bigger fish, such as red snapper, and marine mammals like dolphins.

The petroleum substances that concentrate in the sea creatures could kill them or render them unsafe for eating, scientists say.