Greg Palast blows the lid off BP and its hold over politics.
We have plenty of agencies in this country that have oversight over the situation with deepwater oil rigs. And BP had a catastrophic event occur while operating a drilling rig in the Caspian sea, just months before its catastrophe in our Gulf of Mexico.
So just what type of shenanighans went on, politically speaking, that allowed for BP to go ahead and drill, baby, drill, with even the US Congress agreeing that it was the right thing for them to do.
And now they are going to be back there in the Gulf drilling again.
Here is an intriguing read from Greg Palast about the BP company, its corrupt ways, and how it gets its way. (With nary a jail cell for any of the crooks at its helm.)
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lap_dancers_the_cia_payoffs_and_bps_deepwater_horizon_20140418
Just five months before the Deepwater Horizon spill, Rainey—BP’s vice president for Gulf exploration—testified before the U.S. Congress that the company had drilled offshore “for the last 50 years in a manner both safe and protective of the environment.” BP’s testimony was a lie. The Caspian rig had blown out a year earlier.
But the lie was good enough for Congress. Based on Rainey’s assurances, legislators pressured the Department of the Interior to drop objections to plans for drilling in the Gulf’s deep waters.
Withholding information from Congress is a felony. But Rainey has one heck of a defense: The U.S. State Department was in on the cover-up.
Deep in the pile of confidential State Department cables released by one courageous U.S. soldier, Pfc. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, we have the notes from a secret meeting between the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, Anne E. Derse, and the chief of BP’s Caspian operation. The hugger-mugger was demanded by BP’s American partners, Chevron and Exxon. The U.S. oil companies had complained to the State Department that they were no longer getting their piece of the Caspian loot and BP wouldn’t tell them why. (You’ll remember that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was a member of Chevron’s board.)
In the memo, which you can see in our film “Vultures and Vote Rustlers,” the U.S. ambassador provides the details of the blowout of the bad cement on the BP rig. The State Department kept schtum (quiet) about it, not even warning U.S. safety regulators. And Exxon and Chevron’s chiefs joined BP’s Rainey in the mendacious sales pitch to Congress, testifying, despite their knowledge, that their offshore drilling methods were as safe as a game of checkers.