"Green" BP Paid $33.5 Million For Alaska Spills, Violations Since 2000

[hatrack]

And much, much more . . .

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"In Alaska, BP has been fined more than $33.5 million for oil spills, safety violations and back taxes involving its operations on the North Slope since 2000. The corporation was already on probation after pleading guilty to felony charges in 1999. It now may be barred from federal contracts due to the failure to meet "corporate accountability and environmental responsibility objectives," according to a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency from Alaska's top pollution regulator, Ernesta Ballard.

BP led lobbying of the Clinton administration to lift the export ban on Alaska's North Slope crude without any mitigation to West Coast states for impacts on the volatility of pump prices or the risk of increasing numbers of foreign tankers. By pushing to drain Alaska's reserves quickly, BP simultaneously subjected the West Coast to wild price fluctuations while increasing political pressure to exploit the Arctic Refuge. A tanker from Iraq recently called on Cherry Point.

At the state level, Washington state has partnered with Big Oil and the Coast Guard for even bigger influence. Between BP's Alaska violations and the conviction of a former Coast Guard captain, partnering with criminals is not always in our interest. Richard Softye, who was caught falsifying records for Holland America, previously served BP's interests by opposing Congress' call to fund the dedicated Neah Bay rescue tug as part of the bill lifting the ban on Alaskan oil exports. Instead he promoted a "tug of opportunity system," which would rely on the chance that an appropriate tug would be in the vicinity of a disabled vessel.

In the same bill that passed the last Legislature (creating a four-year source of public revenue for the Neah Bay tug), BP had inserted a requirement for a $200,000 study to see if its new double hull tankers need tug escorts at all. Despite recognizing humans are the cause of most accidents, the Coast Guard does not require any tug escorts on double hull tankers; the state has required a single escort since 1975. Those escorts form the backbone of the tug of opportunity system. Tankers BP charters to send "lean fuel" to California refuse to exchange their ballast water, making BP the primary source of invasive species entering Washington waters."

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/191782_bigoil22.html