BP's Guilty Plea For 2010 Gulf Spill Approved

BP's Guilty Plea For 2010 Gulf Spill Approved By Federal Judge
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN
01/29/2013
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/29/bp-guilty-plea-gulf-oil-spill_n_2571785.html

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP PLC closed the book on the Justice Department's criminal probe of its role in the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Gulf oil spill Tuesday, when a federal judge agreed to let the London-based oil giant plead guilty to manslaughter charges for the deaths of 11 rig workers and pay a record $4 billion in penalties.

What the plea deal approved by U.S. District Judge Sarah Vance doesn't resolve, though, is the federal government's civil claims against BP. The company could pay billions more for environmental damage from its 2010 spill.

Vance noted that the company already has racked up more than $24 billion in spill-related expenses and has estimated it will pay a total of $42 billion to fully resolve its liability for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

The judge said the $4 billion criminal settlement is "just punishment" for BP, even though the company could have paid far more without going broke. In accepting the deal, Vance also cited the risk that a trial could result in a much lower fine for BP, one potentially capped by law at $8.2 million.

The criminal settlement calls for BP to pay nearly $1.3 billion in fines. The largest previous corporate criminal penalty assessed by the Justice Department was a $1.2 billion fine against drug maker Pfizer in 2009.

The plea deal also includes payments of nearly $2.4 billion to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and $350 million to the National Academy of Sciences. The two groups will administer the money to fund Gulf restoration and oil spill prevention projects.

The $4 billion in total penalties are 160 times greater than the $25 million fine that Exxon paid for the 1989 Valdez spill in Alaska, Vance noted.

Before she ruled, the judge heard an apology from a BP executive and emotional testimony from relatives of the 11 workers who died when BP's blown-out Macondo well triggered an explosion on the rig and started the spill.

"I've heard and I truly understand your feelings and the losses you suffered," Vance told the family members.

Keith Jones, whose 28-year-old son, Gordon, died in the rig explosion, said $4 billion isn't adequate punishment.

"It is petty cash to BP," he told Vance. "Their stock went up after this plea deal was announced."

Billy Anderson, whose 35-year-old son, Jason, of Midfield, Texas, died in the blast, recalled the trauma of watching the disaster play out on television.

"These men suffered a horrendous death," he said. "They were basically cremated alive and not at their choice."

BP agreed in November to plead guilty to charges involving the workers' deaths and for lying to Congress about the size of the spill from its broken well, which spewed more than 200 million gallons of oil. Much of it ended up in the Gulf and soiled the shorelines of several states. The company could have withdrawn from the agreement if Vance had rejected it.

BP America vice president Luke Keller apologized to the relatives of the workers who died and for the spill's environmental damage to the Gulf Coast.

"BP knows there is nothing we can say to diminish their loss," he said. "The lives lost and those forever changed will stay with us. We are truly sorry."

Most of the families of rig workers who were killed or injured in the explosion already have settled their claims against BP, through a process separate from this plea deal.

Courtney Kemp-Robertson, whose 27-year-old husband, Roy Wyatt Kemp, of Jonesville, La., died on the rig, said workers had referred to it as the "well from hell" before the explosion.

"By cutting corners, they gambled with the lives of 126 crew members to save a few dollars," she told the judge before turning to address Keller. "They gambled and you lost."

A series of government investigations have blamed the April 20, 2010, blowout on time-saving, cost-cutting decisions by BP and its partners on the drilling project.

Vance told victims' relatives who were in court that she read their "truly gut-wrenching" written statements and factored their words into her decision. She also said she believes BP executives should have personally apologized to family members long before Tuesday's hearing.

"I think BP should have done that out of basic humanity," she said.

BP also has separately agreed to a settlement with lawyers for Gulf Coast residents and businesses who claim the spill cost them money. BP estimates the deal with private attorneys will cost the company roughly $7.8 billion.

In a court filing before the hearing, attorneys for BP and the Justice Department argued that the plea agreement imposes "severe corporate punishment" and will deter BP and other deep-water drilling companies from allowing another disaster to occur.

The Justice Department has reached a separate settlement with rig owner Transocean Ltd. that resolves the government's civil and criminal claims over the Swiss-based company's role in the disaster.

Transocean agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge of violating the Clean Water Act and pay $1.4 billion in civil and criminal penalties. U.S. District Judge Jane Triche Milazzo has scheduled a Feb. 14 hearing to decide whether to accept that criminal settlement. A different judge will decide whether to accept Transocean's civil settlement.

Many relatives of rig workers who died in the blast submitted written statements that were critical of BP's deal. Vance, however, said she couldn't get involved in plea negotiations and only could impose a sentence that adheres to the agreed-upon terms if she accepted it.

Also killed were Aaron Dale "Bubba" Burkeen, 37, of Philadelphia, Miss.; Donald Clark, 49, of Newellton, La.; Stephen Ray Curtis, 40, of Georgetown, La.; Karl Kleppinger Jr., 38, of Natchez, Miss.; Keith Blair Manuel, 56, of Gonzales, La.; Dewey A. Revette, 48, of State Line, Miss.; Shane M. Roshto, 22, of Liberty, Miss.; and Adam Weise, 24, Yorktown, Texas.

In other criminal cases, four current or former BP employees have been indicted. BP rig supervisors Robert Kaluza and Donald Vidrine are charged with manslaughter, accused of repeatedly disregarding abnormal high-pressure readings that should have been glaring indications of trouble just before the blowout.

David Rainey, BP's former vice president of exploration for the Gulf of Mexico, was charged with withholding information from Congress about the amount of oil that was gushing from the well.

Former BP engineer Kurt Mix was charged with deleting text messages about the company's spill response.

La. Oil Spill Crews Suffer Mystery Illnesses

Kerry Sheridan, AFP
Sun Apr 17, 2011
http://news.discovery.com/human/oil-spill-health-effects-04172011.html

Jamie Simon worked on a barge in the oily waters for six months following the BP spill last year, cooking for the cleanup workers, washing their clothes and tidying up after them.

One year later, the 32 year old said she still suffers from a range of debilitating health problems, including racing heartbeat, vomiting, dizziness, ear infections, swollen throat, poor sight in one eye and memory loss.

She blames toxic elements in the crude oil and the dispersants sprayed to dissolve it after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico about 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana on April 20, 2010.

"I was exposed to those chemicals, which I questioned, and they told me it was just as safe as Dawn dishwashing liquid and there was nothing for me to worry about," she said of the BP bosses at the job site.

The local doctor, Mike Robichaux, said he has seen as many as 60 patients like Simon in recent weeks, as this small southern town of 10,000 bordered by swamp land and sugar cane fields grapples with a mysterious sickness that some believe is all BP's fault.

Andy LaBoeuf, 51, said he was paid $1,500 per day to use his boat to go out on the water and lay boom to contain some of the 4.9 million barrels of oil that spewed from the bottom of the ocean after the BP well ruptured.

But four months of that job left him ill and unable to work, and he said he recently had to refinance his home loan because he could not pay his taxes.

"I have just been sick for a long time. I just got sick and I couldn't get better," LaBoeuf said, describing memory problems and a sore throat that has nagged him for a year.

Robichaux, an ear, nose and throat specialist whose office an hour's drive southwest of New Orleans is nestled on a roadside marked with handwritten signs advertising turtle meat for sale, says he is treating many of the local patients in their homes.

"Their work ethic is so strong, they are so stoic, they don't want people to know when they're sick," he said. "Ninety percent of them are getting worse... Nobody has a clue as to what it is."

According to a roster compiled by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a total of 52,000 workers were responding to the Gulf oil spill as of August 2010.

The state of Louisiana has reported 415 cases of health problems linked to the spill, with symptoms including sore throats, irritated eyes, respiratory tract infections, headaches and nausea.

But Bernard Goldstein, an environmental toxicologist and professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said the US government's method of collecting health data on the workers is flawed.

For instance, a major study of response workers by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences was not funded until six months after the spill, a critical delay that affects both the biology and the recall ability of the workers.

"It is too late if you go six months later," he told AFP.

Benzene, a known carcinogen present in crude oil, disappears from a person's blood within four months, Goldstein said.

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, are pollutants that can cause genetic mutations and cancer. They are of particular interest in studying long-term health, but without a baseline for comparison it is difficult to know where they came from -- the oil spill or somewhere else in the environment.

"They last in the body for a longer period of time but they also get confounded by, if you will, obscured by, other sources of PAHs," like eating barbecued meat or smoking cigarettes, said Goldstein.

Further blurring the situation, Louisiana already ranks very low in the overall health of its residents compared to the rest of the United States -- between 44th and 49th out of the 50 states according to government data.

Some similar symptoms, including eye irritation, breathing problems, nausea and psychological stress, have been seen among responders to the Prestige oil tanker spill off Spain in 2002 and the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989 off Alaska.

Local chemist Wilma Subra has been helping test people's blood for volatile solvents, and said levels of benzene among cleanup workers, divers, fishermen and crabbers have been as high as 36 times that of the general population.

"As the event progresses we are seeing more and more people who are desperately ill," she said.

"Clearly it is showing that this is ongoing exposure," Subra said, noting that pathways include contact with the skin, eating contaminated seafood or breathing polluted air. "We have been asking the federal agencies to please provide medical care from physicians who are trained in toxic exposure."

She said she has received no response.

Asked for comment, BP said in an email that "protection of response workers was a top priority" and that it had conducted "extensive monitoring of response workers" in coordination with several government agencies.

"Illness and injury reports were tracked and documented during the response, and the medical data indicate they did not differ appreciably from what would be expected among a workforce of this size under normal circumstances," it added.

Any compensation for sick workers would fall under state law, and "BP does not make these determinations, which must be supported by acceptable medical evidence."

For Simon, her way of life has been completely altered. She said she takes pain relievers every day just to function.

A couple of weeks ago, she read in a local newspaper that other ex-cleanup workers were feeling sick too, and her grandmother urged her to see a doctor.

"I never put the two together. I am just realizing that this is possibly related," she said.

BP's Secret Deepwater Blowout

by Greg Palast exclusive for Truthout/Buzzflash Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Greg Palast investigating BP's blowout in the Caspian, Baku, Azerbaijan 2010.Only 17 months before BP's Deepwater Horizon rig suffered a deadly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, another BP deepwater oil platform also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf disaster that killed 11 BP workers. If you have not heard about the earlier blowout, it's because BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP inform Congress or US safety regulators, and BP, along with its oil industry partners, have preferred to keep it that way.

The earlier blowout occurred in September 2008 on BP's Central Azeri platform in the Caspian Sea.

As one memo marked "secret" puts it, "Given the explosive potential, BP was quite fortunate to have been able to evacuate everyone safely and to prevent any gas ignition." The Caspian oil platform was a spark away from exploding, but luck was with the 211 rig workers.

It was eerily similar to the Gulf catastrophe as it involved BP's controversial "quick set" drilling cement.

The question we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Congress and regulators about the earlier blowout, would those 11 Gulf workers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?

The bigger question is, why is there no clear law to require disclosure? If you bump into another car on the Los Angeles freeway, you have to report it. But there seems no clear requirement on corporations to report a disaster in which knowledge of it could save lives.

Five months prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion, BP's Chief of Exploration in the Gulf, David Rainey, testified before Congress against increased safety regulation of its deepwater drilling operation. Despite the company's knowledge of the Caspian blowout a year earlier, the oil company's man told the Senate Energy Committee that BP's methods are, "both safe and protective of the environment."

Really? BP's quick-dry cement saves money, but other drillers find it too risky in deepwater. It was a key factor in the Caspian blowout. Would US regulators or Congress have permitted BP to continue to use this cement had they known? Would they have investigated before issuing permits to drill?

This is not about BP the industry Bad Boy. This is about a system that condones silence, the withholding of life-and-death information.

Even BP's oil company partners, including Chevron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own investigations team was able to confirm insider tips I had received about the Caspian blowout. In that same confidential memo mentioned earlier, the US Embassy in Azerbaijan complained, "At least some of BP's [Caspian] partners are similarly upset with BP's performance in this episode, as they claim BP has sought to limit information flow about this event even to its [Caspian] partners."

In defense of its behavior, BP told me it did in fact report the "gas release" to the regulators of Azerbaijan. That's small comfort. This former Soviet republic is a police state dictatorship propped up by the BP group's oil royalties. A public investigation was out of the question.

In December, I traveled to Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, to investigate BP and the blowout for British television. I was arrested, though, as a foreign reporter, quickly released. But my eye witnesses got the message and all were too afraid tell their stories on camera.

BP has, in fact, never admitted a blowout occurred, though when confronted by my network, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curious press that the workers had merely been evacuated as a "precaution" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drilling platform, implying a benign natural gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening system failure.

In its 2009 report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), BP inched closer to the full truth. Though not mentioning "blowout" or "cement," the company placed the leak "under" the platform.

This points to a cruel irony: the SEC requires full disclosure of events that might cause harm to the performance of BP's financial securities. But reporting on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.

However, the solution is clear as could be. International corporations should be required to disclose events that threaten people and the environment, not just the price of their stock.

As radiation wafts across the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not respect national borders. What happens in Fukushima or Baku affects lives and property in the USA.

"Regulation" has become a dirty word in US politics. Corporations have convinced the public to fear little bureaucrats with thick rulebooks. But let us remember why government began to regulate these creatures. As Andrew Jackson said, "Corporations have neither bodies to kick nor souls to damn."

Kicking and damning have no effect, but rules do. And after all, when international regulation protects profits, as in the case of patents and copyrights, corporate America is all for it.

Our regulators of resource industries must impose an affirmative requirement to tell all, especially when people, not just song lyrics or stock offerings, are in mortal danger.

Greg Palast directed the fraud investigation of BP and Exxon in the grounding of the Exxon Valdez for the Chugach Natives of Alaska. Palast's investigative reports can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight. See them at http://www.gregpalast.com/.

Oily Gulf Shrimp

From RawStory.com:

The federal government is going out of its way to assure the public that seafood pulled from recently reopened Gulf of Mexico waters is safe to consume, in spite of the largest accidental release of crude oil in America's history.

However, testing methodologies used by the government to deem areas of water safe for commercial fishing are woefully inadequate and permit high levels of toxic compounds to slip into the human food chain, according to a series of scientific and medical professionals interviewed by Raw Story.

In two separate cases, a toxicologist and a chemist independently confirmed their seafood samples contained unusually high volumes of crude oil and harmful hydrocarbons -- and some of this food was allegedly being sent to market.

One test, conducted by a chemist from Mobile, Alabama, employed a rudimentary chemical analysis of shrimp pulled from waters near Louisiana and found "oil and grease" in their digestive tracts.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) tests, which are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), have focused on the animal's flesh, with samples shelled and cleaned before undergoing examination.

Unfortunately, many Gulf coast residents prepare shrimp whole, tossing the creatures into boiling water shells and all.

"I wouldn't eat shrimp, fish or crab caught in the Gulf," said Robert M. Naman, a chemist at ACT Labs in Mobile, Alabama, who conducted the test after being contacted by a New Orleans activist. "The problems people will face, health-wise, are something that people don't understand."

Naman also found that the oil was at an unusual high concentration: 193 parts-per-million (PPM).

Multiple independent lab tests confirm oil in Gulf shrimp
Stephen C. Webster
Wednesday, November 10th, 2010
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/11/10/activist-lab-tests-show-dangerously-toxic-substances-present-gulf-shrimp/

Five Gulf Oil Questions

Phoenix Rising from the Gulf is a mouthful of a name for a blog, but it's a blog that's asking the right questions. Specifically, it's asked five questions about the Gulf of Mexico oil spill:
I. Why did BP, knowingly and purposefully, drill in such close proximity to a salt formation/mud volcano?

II. Why did BP, with the full blessing of the US Coast Guard, execute not one, but two, failed attempts to cap the gushing well, knowing that the frozen hydrates would guarantee the failure of both containment domes?

III. Why did BP create a transparently false narrative for public consumption around the drilling of the two relief wells… with virtually no follow-up?

IV. Why was BP so determined to disappear the oil as quickly as possible in the face of fierce public opposition to the highly toxic and essentially ineffective dispersant COREXIT, and in blatant violation of EPA directives to discontinue its use?

V. Why was BP, a foreign transnational corporation, given the lead position in the unified command structure established by the Federal Government, to effectively enforce martial law in U.S. territorial waters, even to the extent that the five concerned sovereign states have been held hostage throughout the entire crisis? Bear in mind that this unlawful, unconstitutional, and treasonous conduct on the part of the US Government is unprecedented in American history, as is the lawless and criminal behavior of BP et al.


Number five is definitely the most important question of all. And the answer, as far as The Konformist is concerned, is that the Obama Administration was more interested in not angering a giant transnational oil company than protecting the economic and environmental well-being of the people of that area. The Gulf spill then is not just an environmental disaster, it is the end result of Obama's economic policies of serving powerful corporate interests...

SOS May Explain Five SERIOUS Unanswered Gulf Oil Spill Questions – We Do Not Know?
January 30, 2011
http://phoenixrisingfromthegulf.wordpress.com/2011/01/30/sos-may-explain-five-serious-unanswered-gulf-oil-spill-questions-we-do-not-know

Strong Evidence Emerges of BP Oil on Seafloor

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704447604576007761183035214.html

BUSINESS
DECEMBER 9, 2010
Strong Evidence Emerges of BP Oil on Seafloor
JEFFREY BALL

A university scientist and the federal government say they have found persuasive evidence that oil from the massive Gulf of Mexico spill is settling on the ocean floor.

The new findings, from scientists at the University of South Florida and from a broad government effort, mark the latest indication that environmental damage from the blowout of a BP PLC well could be significant where it's hardest to find: deep under the Gulf's surface.

The amount of oil that has settled in the sediment—and the extent of damage it has caused—remains unclear. But scientists who have been on research cruises in the Gulf in recent days report finding layers of residue up to several centimeters thick from what they suspect is BP oil.

The material appears in spots across several thousand square miles of seafloor, they said. In many of those spots, they said, worms and other marine life that crawl along the sediment appear dead, though many organisms that can swim appear healthy. How the death of organisms in the sediment might affect the broader Gulf ecology is something scientists are studying.

Tests to determine how much of the material on the seafloor matches the spilled oil are continuing. But the fact that tests now have started to link some oil in the sediment to the BP well could add to the amount of money BP ends up paying to compensate for the spill's damage.

Under federal law, companies found responsible for an oil spill have to pay compensation for the resulting environmental harm. The more BP's oil is found to have polluted the Gulf floor and killed marine life there, the more money the government is likely to press BP to pay.

The test results also raise questions about the possible downsides of the government's use of chemical dispersants to fight the spill.

Under federal direction, about 1.8 million gallons of dispersants were sprayed on the spilled oil in an effort to break it up into tiny droplets that natural ocean microbes could eat up. At the time, officials said the dispersants shouldn't cause oil from the spill to sink to the seafloor. However, more recently, a federal report said dispersants may have helped some spilled oil sink to the sediment.

Scientific teams have reported in recent months finding a strange substance on the Gulf floor, in some cases as far as about 80 miles from BP's ill-fated Macondo well, which blew out in April and spilled an estimated 4.1 million barrels of oil into the Gulf before it was capped.

They have speculated that the substance—found as deep as 2,300 meters below the surface— was oil from the BP blowout. But, until now, they haven't had this evidence from chemical tests.

David Hollander, an oceanographer at the University of South Florida, said in an interview that he and colleagues have just completed tests showing that the chemical profile of oil they found in Gulf sediment matches that from the blown-out BP well.

"The chemical signatures are identical," said Mr. Hollander, who found the contaminated samples in an area of the Gulf floor off the Florida Panhandle. Although it's conceivable the tests could show a false match with the BP oil, "the statistical probability of something like that is unimaginable," Mr. Hollander said.

The federal government also has found oil matching Macondo oil in Gulf sediment, Steve Murawski, a top National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientist, said in an interview. He declined to disclose how much sediment contamination the government found, or exactly where in the Gulf it was, saying experts still are analyzing the test results.

The government plans to publish details of its findings later this month.

BP, too, is testing the Gulf environment for oil contamination, and some of its results will figure into the coming federal report. Laura Folse, director of science and technology for BP's Gulf Coast restoration effort, declined to say whether BP found oil matching Macondo oil in the Gulf sediment.

She also said she couldn't comment on Mr. Hollander's findings because she hadn't seen them.

Oil from a given location has a telltale chemical pattern—a distinct mix of the various hydrocarbon compounds that make up oil. Running an oil sample through special machines spits out a graph, or fingerprint, of the amount of each component in that oil.

Normally, scientists draw these fingerprints by measuring certain compounds in oil known as "biomarkers." The federal government used that method in its tests, NOAA's Mr. Murawski said.

Mr. Hollander and his colleagues found their sediment samples lacked enough of those biomarkers to test, he said. So they examined a different set of compounds in the oil. They measured the quantity of two groupings of carbon atoms that each compound contained.

When they compared the resulting graph to one from a known sample of Macondo oil, the graphs were "sitting right on top of each other," signaling a match, Mr. Hollander said.

Mr. Murawski said the method Mr. Hollander used is "accepted" but "not standard," though he stressed he wasn't criticizing Mr. Hollander's work.

Samantha Joye, a University of Georgia oceanographer, also has found what she believes to be evidence of BP oil in Gulf sediment. She is awaiting lab results tracing the chemical fingerprints of sediment samples she took.

On a research cruise in the Gulf that ended Friday, she saw worms that crawl along the Gulf floor "just decimated," she said. But eels and fish, which can swim away, often appeared fine, she said.

The federal government made sure to test sediment in areas where Ms. Joye and Mr. Hollander said they found oil.

Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com

Oil Traveled Up the Gulf Food Chain, Scientists Say

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/oil-traveled-up-the-gulf-food-chain-scientists-say

November 8, 2010
Oil Traveled Up the Gulf Food Chain, Scientists Say
CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

Crude oil floating on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico in May.While officials in Washington pick apart the sequence of events that led to the release of nearly five million barrels of oil in the Deepwater Horizon disaster, scientists are still trying to figure out where all of that oil went.

Some of it was captured in the spill response, some of it is still visible in marshes and on beaches, some of it remains in plumes underwater and some of it evaporated, though there are still heated disputes over how much went where.

Meanwhile, a group of scientists in Alabama has been studying another pathway for all of that oil: through the Gulf of Mexico’s hungry oil-eating microbes. Scientists expected bacteria to eat the oil, but speculation remained about what would happen after that. As it turns out, the oil that the bacteria consumed traveled up the food chain as the oil-eating bacteria were eaten in turn, the scientists suggest.

By tracking oil’s particular carbon signature, which differs from the nutrients in the usual bacterial diet, scientists from the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama were able to observe the growing presence of oil in the planktonic food web as oil reached the waters of the northern gulf.

They describe their findings in a report published on Monday in Environmental Research Letters.

“We showed with little doubt that oil consumed by marine bacteria did reach the larger zooplankton that form the base of the food chain,” Monty Graham, the lead author of the report, said in a news release. These zooplankton are in turn eaten by larger marine organisms like fish and whales.

Dr. Graham added, “The continuing search for where the oil went should not only include direct evidence of existing pools of oil, but also the shadows of where the oil once was as indicated by so-called ‘biomarkers’ — such as light carbon isotopes in the bodies of plankton.”

The study did not look for toxicity in the food web; government scientists are studying that question. But it adds to the larger picture of the oil’s fate, providing evidence that much of the oil that “disappeared” was, to put it more precisely, eaten.

Oliver Stone: US should nationalize oil resources

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100720/ap_on_en_mo/eu_oliver_stone_bp_1
Oliver Stone: US should nationalize oil resources
RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press Writer
Tue Jul 20, 2010

LONDON – The Gulf of Mexico oil spill shows that the United States should follow the example of South American socialists in nationalizing its energy industry, filmmaker Oliver Stone said Tuesday.

The Academy Award-winning director of "Born on the Fourth of July" and "JFK" said that America's country's natural wealth was too important to be left in private hands, telling journalists in central London that oil and other natural resources "belong to the people."

"This BP oil spill is typical" of what happens when private industry is allowed to draw revenue on what should be a public good, Stone said.

"We shouldn't make this kind of profit on oil or on health or on war or on prisons. All these industries should be public industries."

Stone, 63, is in the British capital to promote his documentary, "South of the Border," which tells the story of firebrand Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his left-wing Latin American allies.

The 75-minute film is meant to draw attention to the social improvements ushered in by Chavez, who has nationalized vast swaths of Venezuela's economy, including important parts of the oil sector and big chunks of the banking, electric and steel industries. Bolivian leader Evo Morales, also interviewed by Stone for the documentary, has similarly expanded the state's control over the country's energy infrastructure.

Critics of the film accuse Stone of painting a fawning portrait of the Venezuelan leader, saying the documentary ignores Venezuela's opposition — which human rights groups say is being squeezed by Chavez's increasingly authoritarian leadership and a crackdown on private media.

Stone accused critics of "nitpicking."

The director occasionally wandered off-topic during the press conference, discussing Latin American history, sharing his thoughts about President Barack Obama (who he dismissed as "Bush not-so-lite") and musing about the possibility of making a film about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.

"I don't know, that's a hot potato for me," Stone said when asked whether a movie about Ahmedinejad was in the works. "Obviously he's got bad press in the West."

"South of the Border" had its U.K. premier Monday at the Curzon Cinema in central London.
___
Online:

http://www.southoftheborderdoc.com/

The Gulf Oil Disaster Is War On We, The People

http://rense.com/general91/guf.htm

The Gulf Oil Disaster Is War On We, The People
30 Facts Evidencing The Rothschild League Of Bankers Planned The Gulf Oil Crisis
By Leonard G. Horowitz And Sherri Kane
7-7-10

Overview

This article explains what is really happening in the Gulf of Mexico, who is really responsible for the explosion, and how the devastation serves investment bankers. These globalists sway stocks, create markets, and planned this crisis, among a series of catastrophies, to advance geopolitical and financial agendas.

Introduction

WAR has been declared against We The People. Yet, there is no country or military present to defend us.

Covert infiltrations and corruptions in governments by the "Rothschild League" of bankers and "private equity investors"now poison our bodies, minds, and planet. Yet, appropriate military and/or militia defenses are prohibited.

Crisis-capitalists are petrochemically massacring us and our environment. They have deployed propaganda--mass media deception--to camouflage their real intentions and vast destruction.

The air we breathe, food we eat, and water we drink, has been polluted to deliver profitable diseases and planned depopulation, simulating a "scorched earth policy" of war.

Citizens' arrests, grand jury investigations, criminal indictments, and war crime prosecutions are urgently needed, yet financially forbidden.

Generalized fear, depression, fatigue, and apathy is incapacitating our defenses, aiding the adversaries, and predisposing us to diseases and early deaths.

Based on the following irrefutable facts, the so-called "accidental explosion" in the Gulf is a Transocean/Halliburton/British Petroleum/Goldman-Sachs attack---the latest in a series of unspeakable war crimes perpetrated by Anglo-American State of Rothschild League bankers.

Definition and Function of War

WAR has been defined as "a contest between nations or states, carried on by force, . . . for the extension of commerce, . . . for obtaining and establishing the superiority and dominion of one over the other."

Consider the fact that "it takes money to make money."Across civilization today, if you want to buy a property or grow a business, most people need to take loans from banks. In fact, the primary way that Nations, States, and civilians advance economically is contracted or underwritten by the banking industry.

Similarly, war is nearly always financed by banks and, allegedly, repaid by taxes.

As you read the following facts, consider these methods by which We The People are now nightmarishly enslaved by a usury system of rampant con-sum(p)-tion. (A word that used to mean degeneration by terminal illness; a sum total "con.")

Consider the "investment bankers" who steward the stock-markets and care nearly nil about how many species are going extinct, including possibly our own.

Then reflect on this quote by poet Dorothy Parker:

"If you want to know what God thinks about money, just look at the people He gives it to."

Today, besides generating profit as proven below, the Rothschild League, that has held dominion over our global economy for centuries, expands it's mass-mind manipulation, depopulation, and environmental destruction for protection against We The People. After all, we are slowly awakening like a sleeping giant. Our rebuke threatens their plan for complete global control.


30 Chilling Facts Proving We The People Are Under Attack, in an Undeclared War, With the Rothschild League of Bankers:

1) The media is grossly censoring the extent of the devastation in the Gulf. The poisons--oil and chemical dispersant (Corexit)--are destined to spread globally, but honest reporting is restricted, and independent investigators are being arrested. This censorship is a sure sign of fascism--not freedom or democracy. In this way, the media, financially directed by leading investment bankers (cited below), accomplices this global poisoning, or omnicide. (Click here for an example of more accurate reporting from the Gulf by an independent news source.)

2) The news and network "programming" is mind-controlling propaganda issued by the "partners" in the Rothschild League of Banks including Goldman-Sachs, JPMorgan-Chase and UBS that direct BP, Transocean, Halliburton, the clean-up capitalists, Corexit suppliers, even the trailers used by clean-up crews, through co-investors heavily represented in the Partnership for New York City (PFNYC), founded by David Rockefeller and chartered by the Royal Family of England. All together, these partners wield the most formidable economic power in world history.

3) Ongoing worsening environmental pollution has been a primary objective of these Rothschild League financiers since at least the 1960s, according to their leaked economic agenda. Destroying the environment, thus creating new global threats for remediation markets and emergency management is unconscionable, butvery real. This has become a viable alternative to traditional warfare securing profitable population control through crisis capitalism.

4) The Gulf oil catastrophe reflects this one of three major financially-sustaining war substitutes. Currently, less urgent than environmental destruction is space-based threats (e.g., solar flares, alien menaces, and colliding asteroids). The third, and least apparent profitable war substitute ispetrochemical-pharmaceutical enslavement. All three of these incentives and objectives for global governance, emergency preparedness, and profitable military and Homeland Security responses,"carries the weight of . . . considerable actual sacrifice of life." (Quote from The Report From Iron Mountain--a scholarly, serious, non-fiction, non-satirical leaked worked claimed by Rothschild League banking cartel propagandists, including media pundits, to be a satire.)

5) The propaganda ploy used most effectively in the Gulf, and in all crises, is to blame illusory villains to create sham debates. When Obama is blamed for the oil crisis, for instance, the "accident" faults Democrats. When Halliburton is blamed, the Republicans feel faulted. This divisive diversion suckers masses of idiots, discredits the media's intelligence, and shames people who still claim we have a"free" and "responsible" press.

6) The Deepwater Horizon (Mississippi Canyon 252) oil rig that exploded is the property of Transocean, not British Petroleum (BP); and both companies are financially directed by Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and UBS investment bankers, all operating in the Rothschild League of banks.

7) Coincidentally, or demonically, the oil rig's failed cementation job exploded on Hitler's birthday, just in time to poison Earth Day 2010, thanks to Transocean's contractor--the infamous Dick Cheney/George Bush officiatedHalliburton Company allied with Homeland Security.

8) Halliburton officials admit knowing their cementation job was likely to explode just when it did, according toCongressional testimony.

9) Goldman Sachs (GS) officials, likewise, knew the rig was likely to explode when it did. They bet millions of dollars on this event only days before it happened! (Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of GS, directed 44% (4.6 million shares) of BP stock to be dumped three weeks before the explosion.

10) Not surprisingly, Transocean was merged into its current corporate state by Goldman-Sachs (a.k.a., "Government Sachs") in 2007.

11) David Sidwell, Risk Committee Chairman of UBS, the wealthiest Swiss bank (in the Rothschild League or alliance of so-called"competing" banks) and the world's largest wealth manager, also dumped BP stocks massively (i.e., 99% of the banks holdings, or 2.1 million shares,) as did Wachovia/Wells Fargo.

12) BP Oil CEO Tony Hayward sold 1/3 of his BP stock (223,288 shares) on March 17--a month before the explosion.

13) Just prior to 9/11, you may recall, Goldman Sachs did the same with airline stocks; and before the Gulf catastrophe, GS shorted mortgage company stocks, fueling the real estate collapse in America.

New Shocking Facts:

14) The Management Boards of the Eurex Stock Exchanges and the Executive Board of Germany's Eurex Clearing AG decided, on April 14, 2010, to introduce an equity option on shares of Transocean Ltd, effective on the day of the explosion, April 20, 2010. This gave inside traders a full day to dump their "uninsured" stock in Transocean at the highest price possible (before the rest of Wall Street responded to the explosion). Then the crisis capitalists were able to reinvest their funds securing the higher price value.

These officials published zero reason for Transocean's new equity option program that encouraged banking criminals to use"protective puts" to make millions.

In other words, by paying a relatively small premium (compared to the soon-to-be plunging market value of Transocean stock), the Rothschild Leaguers knew no matter how far the stock dropped, it could be sold at the original "strike price" (also called the "put option") anytime before April 20, 2012.

This additionally evidences premeditated murder, and the financial motives of the Swiss/German banking chiefs influencing Europe's most active stock exchanges. These inside traitors and industrial sabateurs, financially controlling Transocean, Halliburton, and BP, committed the gravest environmental crime of all time, with obvious plans to profit from the mass murdering of people and destruction of the Gulf.

15) This was how money was made from the obvious sabotage. After UBS sold its 2.1 million shares of BP, prior to the explosion, the "put option" policy on BP stock was similarly exercised when UBS bought back 8.6 million BP shares by June 7.

16) Transocean Vice President of Marketing, Terry Bonno, met UBS officials on May 27, 2010, according to a heavily censored Thompson Reuter's report and transcript. (CLICK HERE to read it.) The "Ultra-Deepwater market will start to pick up longer-term," Bonno encouraged banking officials.

17) So within weeks of the explosion the Rothschild League of investment bankers were yelling "Buy! Buy! Buy! BP stock," stating the costs for clean-up were miniscule compared to what their investments and company profits would earn.

18) This quote detailed the BP-banking-stock-jocks' plot:"Buying shares today while writing $55 calls and "puts" for the January 2012 expiration allows for an outstanding cash-on-cash return if BP merely bounces back by 14% over the next 21 months. In a best case you'll net 98% total returns on the actual cash outlay (assuming you write the puts against paid-up marginable equity already held in your margin-type account)."

(Editor's Note: Can you imagine the psychopathology, blind ignorance, and murderous greed of investing, or reinvesting, in these companies that are killing us and our planet?)

19) Much like the instantly manufactured equity investment option created for Transocean right before the explosion, BP's stock insurance plan secured the ongoing devastation in the Gulf with this financial promise: "In a worst case scenario you'll end up with twice the number of BP ADRs at an average cost of $42.64 or less," stock gurus promoted. "That's lower than the annual lows for BP during the entire period 2004 right through 2007."

Proud Profiteers in Media Magic

The wizards of oil, pulling the strings behind the media's propaganda, are best exemplified by Goldman Sachs's CEO, Lloyd Blankfein. Lloyd merged, and still largely controls, ABC/Disney and Miramax. Blankfein's partner, co-chairing the PFNYC, is Rupert Murdoch, controlling FOX News, Time-Warner, Associated Press, News Corp and much more. Another partner in this David Rockefeller-founded PFNYC cabal is Thompson Reuters chairman, Thomas Glocer. The PFNYC was responsible for financial reconciliations from 9-11, and "veering" World Trade Center reconstruction money from New York to Las Vegas through Apollo Management's MGM private equity investments. (Apollo co-owns Nalco/Corexit with Goldman Sachs.) The PFNYC was chartered by Britain's Royal family, bringing NBC/Comcast into their stead, as well as the General Electric company. Last but not least, CBS owner, Sumner Murray Rothstein (Redstone), joined the clique through his CBS-Viacom stable of companies.

20) The Halliburton cementation job's sabotage, and resulting oil hemorrhage in the Gulf, served perfectly, synchronously and financially, to "veer" media attention away from Lloyd Blankfein's/ Goldman-Sachs's shorting of the American housing market, accelerating the planned economic collapse of the USA for the forthcoming New World Order's "New Deal."

21) And just when we thought the Government Sachs connection to the Gulf oil rigging could not get any deeper, we learn that GS holds controlling interests (with Apollo Management) in the Nalco Company which produces the hideously deadly oil dispersant named Corexit!

22) The Rothschild Leaguers "ruled out all [Corexit] competitors even those that have shown to be far less toxic and, in some cases, nearly twice as effective," reported Paul Quinlan in the New York Times. The reason being . . .

23) Nalco formed from a joint venture with the David Rockefeller-controlled Exxon Chemical Co. in 1994. Then, . . .

24) In 2003, The Blackstone Group, Apollo Management L.P., and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, bought Ondeo Nalco for $4.3 billon dollars. All three companies are partnered in the Rockefeller-founded, Royal Family-chartered PFNYC.

25) Ironically, according to Nalco's website, the company is portrayed as a water, energy, and air conservation corporation. They claim to be the world's leading water treatment company. Their poisonous dispersant, Corexit, is not their main business. It is a "first aid product that they've always had and they've never really used."

26) Corexit was found poisoning clean-up workers, causing kidney and liver disorders, following its debut in the 1989 Exxon-Valdez disaster. Nalco blamed these problems on 2-butoxyethanol, now claimed to have been removed.

And that's not all. . . .

27) The George Bush/Dick Cheney 9/11-linked Halliburton Company purchased the world's largest oil-spill cleanup entity, Boots & Coots, three weeks before the "natural gas leak." This was synchrounous with the bankers beginning to unload BP and Transocean stocks, and securing equity options to insure their investments. Other major shareholders in Nalco/Corexit include billionaire Warren Buffett and his conglomerate holding company, Berkshire Hathaway; Maurice Strong, Al Gore, George Soros.

28) Historically, Homeland Security has contracted with Halliburton to provide detention camps for political dissidents and displaced populations, through KBR, whose financial underwriters feature the aforementioned war-makers:Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC; Goldman, Sachs & Co.; UBS Securities LLC; Citigroup Global Markets Inc.; and Wachovia Capital Markets, LLC--the precise financial institutions shorting BP and Transocean stocks as detailed above.
Furthermore, . . .

29) Homeland Security's choice of accommodations for Gulf oil clean-up crews are the same toxic trailers banned from use during Hurricane Katrina.

30) Homeland Security medical officials are also now implicated in fraudulently promoting (throughAlex Jones) a "decoy product" for infectious disease markets called Silver Sol for profit and probably depopulation as well. (CLICK HERE for the shocking story.)

Conclusion and Solution

Similar to what we found while investigating the fabricated H1N1-H5N1 Swine Flu fright and fraudulent (and increasingly threatening) vaccination campaign, the devil-doers were those in control of the "PharmaMedia" involving Wall Street's heaviest hitters, all partners in the PFNYC and the Rothschild League of investment bankers. (View: PHARMAWHORES: The SHOWTIME Sting of Penn & Teller.)

We The People urgently need a new banking system that entirely excludes the aforementioned criminals. It must encourage investments in permaculture and sustainable production, not destructive and polluting consumption. It must discourage petrochemical-pharmaceutical toxicity that is killing us and most other species. And it must invest in suppressed alternative energies, including hydrogen fuel and Tesla technologies that have been kept from common use by the financial paradigm makers/enslavers.

The new banking system must value biological sensitivity, and love-based spirituality, more than lust for money, fueling a degenerative economy that is based on usury.

One suggested solution is to form a posse to search and find leaders in this criminal banking cartel (such as Lloyd Blankfein and David Rockefeller) and serve them, and responding law enforcers, with citizens' arrest complaints, widely publicized, using this article and its links as evidence detailing the criminal conspiracy. This way, attorneys general may be forced to do their jobs in protecting We The People.

Otherwise, we need a miracle to stop the financial industry from doing what is it is doing to us and our planet. This is not a religious statement, just an accurate observation.

Jesus put his life on the line by preaching the same thing. He exposed and flogged the lesser humans who were financially enslaving humanity through usury, usurping faith in God and the new true Nation under Him.

In defense of ourselves and Mother Earth, We the People now have no other reasonable choice but to neutralize mass murderers, their lethal intoxications, and environmental destructions.

We pray that LOVE--communicated musically in the secreted528Hz frequency--will help prompt this urgently required miraculous transformation of our economy and society, ending the psychopathology of menacing greed, to secure permacultural sustainability and real enduring happiness.

End

About the authors:

Dr. Leonard Horowitz is the author of sixteen books including three American best-sellers, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident or Intentional?, Healing Codes for the Biological Apocalypse, and Healing Celebrations: Miraculous Recoveries Through Ancient Scripture, Natural Medicine and Modern Science. Dr. Horowitz, of Healthy World Organization (HWO), is currently advancing as an alternative to the duplicitous World Health Organization (WHO). Sherri Kane is an investigative journalist who defected from FOX News, Los Angeles, for ethical reasons. She has written extensively on Washington politics including Barack Obama's history. Most recently, she has exposed the "PharmaMedia," detailing links between the wealthiest Wall Street investors in mass media and the pharmaceutical industry.

First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico

http://www.naturalnews.com/029130_Gulf_of_Mexico_censorship.html
First Amendment suspended in the Gulf of Mexico as spill cover-up goes Orwellian
Saturday, July 03, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper says, "A new law passed today, and back by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, ... will prevent reporters and photographers from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife just about any place we need to be. By now you're probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they're working for because they're afraid of losing their jobs."

Watch the video clip yourself at NaturalNews.TV: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

The rule, of course, is designed to restrict the media's access to cleanup operations in order to keep images of oil-covered seabirds off the nation's televisions. With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what's really happening in the Gulf.

The war is on to control your mind

If all this sounds familiar, it's because the U.S. government uses this same tactic during every war. The first casualty of war, as they say, is the truth. There are lots of war images the government doesn't want you to see (like military helicopter pilots shooting up Reuters photographers while screaming "Yee-Haw!" over the comm radios), and there are other images they do want you to see ("surgical strike" explosions from "smart" bombs, which makes it seem like the military is doing something useful). So war reporting is carefully monopolized by the government to deliver precisely the images they want you to see while censoring everything else.

Now the same Big Brother approach is being used in the Gulf of Mexico: Criminalize journalists, censor the story and try to keep the American people ignorant of what's really happening. It's just the latest tactic from a government that no longer even recognizes the U.S. Constitution or its Bill of Rights. Because the very first right is Freedom of Speech, which absolutely includes the right to walk onto a public beach and take photographs of something happening out in the open, on public waters. It is one of the most basic rights of our citizens and our press.

But now the Obama administration has stripped away those rights, transforming journalists into criminals. Now, we might expect something like this from Chavez, or Castro or even the communist leaders of China, but here in the United States, we've all been promised we lived in "the land of the free." Obama apparently does not subscribe to that philosophy anymore (if he ever did).

So how does criminalizing journalists equate to "land of the free?" It doesn't, obviously. Forget freedom. (Your government already has.) This is about controlling your mind to make sure you don't visually see the truth of what the oil industry has done to your oceans, your shorelines and your beaches. This is all about keeping you ignorant with a total media blackout of the real story of what's happening in the Gulf.

The real story, you see, is just too ugly. And the government has fracked up the cleanup effort to such a ridiculous extent that instead of the "transparency" they once promised, they're now resorting to the threat of arrest for all journalists who try to get close enough to cover the story.

Yes, this is happening right now in America. This isn't a hoax. I know, it sounds more like something you might hear about in Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela or some other nation run by dictators. But now it's happening right here in the USA.

As Anderson Cooper reported on CNN:

"Now the government is getting in on the act. Despite what Admiral Thad Allen promised about transparency just nearly a month ago.

Thad Allen: "The media will have uninhibited access anywhere we're doing operations..."

Anderson Cooper: The Coast Guard today announced new rules keeping photographers, reporters and anyone else from coming with 65 feet of any response vessel or booms out on the water or on beaches. What this means is that oil-soaked birds on an island surrounded by a boom, you can't get close enough to take that picture. Shot of oil on beaches with booms? Stay 65 feet away. Pictures of oil-soaked booms uselessly laying in the water because they haven't been collected like they should? You can't get close enough to see that. Believe me, that is out there. But you only know that if you get close to it, and now you can't without permission. Violators could face a fine of $40,000 and Class D felony charges."

See the video yourself at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=203

Welcome to the (censored) club

All I can say to CNN is: Welcome to the club! This kind of censorship, intimidation and tyranny has been going on for decades in the field of health, where the Orwellian FDA has treated the entire U.S. public to a nationwide blackout on truthful health information about healing foods and nutritional supplements. CNN has never covered that story, by the way. Most of the mainstream media has, in fact, gone right along with censorship of truthful health information by the FDA and FTC.

Now they're suddenly crying wolf. But where was the media when the FDA was raiding nutritional supplement companies and arresting people who dared to sell healing foods with honest descriptions about how they might help protect your health? The media went right along with the cover-up and never bothered to even tell its viewers a cover-up was taking place.

You see, even CNN is willing to tolerate some Orwellian censorship, as long as its advertisers are okay with it. The only reason they're talking about censorship in the Gulf of Mexico right now is because oil companies don't influence enough of their advertising budget to yank the story.

Censorship is not okay in a free society

I like the fact that CNN is finding the courage to speak up now about this censorship in the Gulf, but I wish they wouldn't stay silent on the other media blackouts in which they have long participated. Media censorship is bad for any nation, and it should be challenged regardless of the topic at hand. When the media is not allowed to report the truth on a subject -- any subject! -- the nation suffers some loss as a result.

Without the light of media scrutiny, corporations and government will get away with unimaginable crimes against both humanity and nature. That's what's happening right now in the Gulf of Mexico: A crime against nature.

Obama doesn't want you to see that crime. He's covering it up to the benefit of BP. He's keeping you in the dark by threatening reporters and photographers with arrest. How's that for "total transparency?"

The only thing transparent here is that President Barack Obama has violated his own oath of office by refusing to defend the Constitution. By any honest measure, in fact, these actions, which are endorsed by the White House, stand in direct violation of the U.S. Constitution. And that means this new censorship rule in the Gulf, which suspends the First Amendment, is unconstitutional. It also means those who decided on this rule are enemies of freedom.

They are the ones who should be arrested and hauled off to federal prison, not the CNN reporters who are trying to cover this story.

The seeds of tyranny

The loss of life in the Gulf of Mexico isn't the only catastrophe taking place here, you see: Now we're losing our freedoms while our government tries to intentionally blind us all from the truth of what's happening on our own public beaches.

When those who seek truth are branded criminals by the government, it is only a matter of time before that government expands its criminalization labeling to include anyone who disagrees with it. These are the seeds of tyranny, and Obama is planting them at your doorstep right now.

What BP did to the Gulf Coast, Obama is now doing to your freedom.

Who is Kenneth Feinberg?

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jul2010/fein-j02.shtml

Who is Kenneth Feinberg?
By Tom Eley
2 July 2010

The career of “claims czar” Kenneth Feinberg leaves little doubt that the escrow account set up by the Obama administration to compensate victims of BP’s Gulf of Mexico oil blowout will have as its overriding aim the defense of the oil giant’s profitability.

The selection of Feinberg to head the $20 billion Independent Claims Facility was approved by BP executives, and with good reason. He has been repeatedly called upon to protect the interests of the wealthy and the powerful. Most notably, he was selected to chair a similar escrow account set up to compensate victims of the September, 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US. Later he was chosen as the Obama administration’s “pay czar” for bailed out banks and corporations.

Feinberg’s task has been to present the image of objectivity and concern while pursuing the interests of the state and big corporations.

An attorney by training, Feinberg emerged as a political figure in the late 1970s, when Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy made him chief of his Senate staff. From there, Feinberg joined or helped establish two politically connected Washington law firms. His specialization was mediation and “alternative dispute resolution.”

In a number of high-profile disputes since the 1980s, Feinberg has repeatedly proven himself a reliable “fixer” for the ruling class:

Agent Orange Product Liability Litigation

The massive use of the chemical defoliant Agent Orange by the US military in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War had, by the 1980s, become a major source of embarrassment for the US. In addition to devastating the Vietnamese population—some 400,000 people died from the chemical and 500,000 children were born with birth defects—tens of thousands of US soldiers had experienced direct exposure. They reported a wide array of symptoms, from various cancers to birth defects among their children.

A class action lawsuit was gaining steam against Agent Orange’s manufacturers when Feinberg was brought in to resolve the case. Within six weeks, he had ended the eight-year-old lawsuit by establishing a $180 million fund, a small amount for Agent Orange’s producers, the chemical giants Dow and Monsanto. For his labors Feinberg was paid $800,000. Affected veterans were given $1,200 in exchange for disavowing their right to litigate.

The Dalkon Shield case

Feinberg was appointed Trustee of the victim compensation fund for Dalkon Shield, a notorious birth control device that manufacturer A. H. Robins sold in the 1970s in spite of evidence that it caused serious injury among women.

According to the May 1996 journal HealthFacts, “235,000 American women suffered injuries, most of which involved life-threatening pelvic infections. Many cases were severe enough to cause hospitalization, permanent infertility, complete hysterectomy, and/or chronic pelvic pain. There were over 200 documented cases of a rare, potentially lethal type of infected miscarriage called spontaneous septic abortion. Ultimately, 20 women died of complications associated with the Dalkon Shield.”

It was established that A. H. Robins knew of the dangers to women’s health, but suppressed the information, even destroying evidence. In 1985 A. H. Robins filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in order to protect itself from Dalkon Shield litigation. A trust fund was established, overseen by Feinberg, by which injured women forfeited their right to go to court and a cap was set on company liability.

While Feinberg’s trust gave most women $725 or less, A.H. Robins was saved. “[P]otential buyers were no longer scared by Robins, which made other lucrative products like Chapstick and Robitussin,” HealthFacts explains. “In 1987, while the company was in bankruptcy, Robins stock had the highest rate of appreciation of any security on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1989, Robins was purchased by American Home Products; the company’s stock, much of it owned by the Robins family, quadrupled in value.”

September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

After mediating a series of high profile cases such as Dalkon, Agent Orange, as well as several asbestos class action lawsuits, Feinberg’s credentials were well-established to head up the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, which aimed to stop lawsuits by family members of those killed in the attack on the World Trade Center.

Appointed by Bush administration Attorney General John Ashcroft, Feinberg’s assignment was only secondarily to limit damages to the federal government and the airlines. This time the primary purpose was political—to avoid lawsuits that might bring to light uncomfortable truths about the Bush administration’s role in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks and what the preponderance of evidence suggests was an ordered stand down of the US military-intelligence apparatus.

Signing up for the fund meant that families would forgo the right to sue. It was also paired with a scarcely veiled threat. “In making their election (to forego monetary compensation), plaintiffs should be fully informed of the risks accompanying litigation,” the Bush administration asserted in a 2001 court document. “TSA’s vigorous enforcing of the rules governing non-disclosure of sensitive security information may present significant litigation consequences for all plaintiffs, and the government respectfully requests that the court include a statement to this effect in any finalized protocol.”

Mary Sciavo, an attorney who represented several 9/11 families, warned the families not to be “bulldozed into taking a cheap payout from the government.”

Obama administration “Pay Czar”

Feinberg’s most prominent job came with his selection by Obama to “oversee” executive pay at financial institutions and corporations that had received a large portion of the $750 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The appointment was largely a public relations stunt designed to defuse popular anger over Wall Street pay.

Feinberg did nothing to curb executive compensation at the firms, personally approving multi-million dollar pay packages for numerous executives. In 2009, Feinberg declared he was limiting cash salaries for top executives to $500,000. This figure—ten times the median pay for US workers—was in fact no limit. Firms could simply increase stock options and other forms of compensation. In the end, the top 138 executives at the TARP bailed out firms averaged $2.5 million in compensation in 2009.

At the financial wing of General Motors, GMAC, Feinberg approved a $7.7 million salary for senior risk officer Samuel Ramsey and $4.9 million in compensation for Chief Financial Officer Robert Hull in 2009. CEO Fritz Henderson saw his 2009 compensation more than double from 2008, to $5.5 million. This while the Obama administration’s Auto Task Force gutted the wages and benefits of autoworkers and retirees.

In his last act as “pay czar,” Feinberg approved a $4 million raise for the CEO of the three-times bailed-out out insurance giant AIG, Robert Benmosche, for 2010. “In light of the fact that the specified employee will remain in the employ of AIG,” Feinberg wrote to AIG, “it is appropriate to provide… long-term incentives to ensure that the employee contributes to AIG’s long-term success and, ultimately, AIG’s ability to repay taxpayers.”

US lawmaker: Oil spill costs may run trillions of dollars

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0701/lawmaker-oil-spill-costs-run-trillions-dollars/

US lawmaker: Oil spill costs may run trillions of dollars
Agence France-Presse
Thursday, July 1st, 2010

The cost of helping the US Gulf Coast rebound from the ruinous Gulf of Mexico oil spill could run into the trillions of dollars, a US lawmaker said Thursday after a briefing from top government officials.

"It will take billions of dollars -- even trillions," Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee told reporters, citing "a presentation by the president's team on the BP oil spill" early in the day.

"We will have an ongoing and unending commitment to fixing this disaster," the Texas lawmaker said at a press conference with other representatives calling for blocking an Afghan war spending bill.

An estimated 35,000 to 60,000 barrels of oil a day has been gushing out of a ruptured well since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig sank on April 22 some 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the coast of Louisiana.

Some 423 miles (681 kilometers) of US shorelines have now been oiled as crude gushes into the sea at an alarming rate, 10 weeks into the worst environmental disaster in US history.

BP ‘burning sea turtles alive’

http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0620/bp-burning-sea-turtles-alive/
BP ‘burning sea turtles alive’
Daniel Tencer
Sunday, June 20th, 2010

A rare and endangered species of sea turtle is being burned alive in BP's controlled burns of the oil swirling around the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat captain tasked with saving them says the company has blocked rescue efforts.

Mike Ellis, a boat captain involved in a three-week effort to rescue as many sea turtles from unfolding disaster as possible, says BP effectively shut down the operation by preventing boats from coming out to rescue the turtles.

"They ran us out of there and then they shut us down, they would not let us get back in there," Ellis said in an interview with conservation biologist Catherine Craig.

Part of BP's efforts to contain the oil spill are controlled burns. Fire-resistant booms are used to corral an area of oil, then the area within the boom is lit on fire, burning off the oil and whatever marine life may have been inside.

"Once the turtles get in there they can't get out," Ellis said.

Dr. Brian Stacey of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told NPR last week that, although there are five different species of sea turtle in the Gulf of Mexico, the majority of the ones found affected by the oil spill are Kemp's Ridleys, "the rarest of them all."

Ellis confirmed that he's mostly been seeing Kemp's Ridleys.

Mike Michael at Gather.com reports that Kemp's Ridleys are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Harming or killing one "carries stiff fines and civil penalties ($500-$25,000) assessed for each violation. Criminal penalties include possible prison time and fines from $25,000-$50,000."

Michael suggests that, given the size of the fines BP could face as a result of the turtle deaths, the company may be happy to let turtles burn, as it would make it impossible to calculate exactly how many turtles died. He notes that the bodies of dead animals are being kept as evidence to determine how much in fines BP will be liable for.

"Is BP destroying evidence to keep their liability down?" he asks. "Is anyone going to stop them?"

Asked if he had suffered health problems as a result of being exposed to the chemicals swirling around the Gulf, boat captain Ellis said he had been suffering from "pretty wicked headaches," but said he didn't know "if that was just from seeing everything you know just destroyed and just disgusting."

Judge Blocks Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/us/23drill.html

Judge Blocks Deep-Water Drilling Moratorium
CHARLIE SAVAGE
June 22, 2010

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in New Orleans on Tuesday blocked a six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling projects that the Obama administration had imposed in response to the vast oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The White House swiftly said the administration would appeal the decision.

In a 22-page ruling, Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a May 28 order halting all floating offshore drilling projects in more than 500 feet of water and preventing the government from issuing new permits for such projects.

Citing the economic harm to businesses and workers in the gulf caused by the moratorium, Judge Feldman — a 1983 appointee of President Ronald Reagan — wrote that the Obama administration had failed to justify the need for the sweeping suspension, which he characterized as “generic, indeed punitive.”

He wrote that “the blanket moratorium, with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger.”

The bulletin of the judge’s decision came on reporters’ hand-held devices just as Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, had ended his daily briefing. Clearly prepared for it, Mr. Gibbs said the administration would “immediately appeal” to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Mr. Gibbs said the president “strongly believes that continuing to drill at those depths without knowing what’s happened” in the April 20 explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, which killed 11 workers and left a well gushing out of control, “makes no sense” and puts people’s lives at risk.

The Obama administration had argued that a six-month suspension of deepwater drilling was necessary so that the government could complete its investigation of the Deepwater Horizon accident, and make sure that other drilling operations on the outer continental shelf were safe.

But the order was challenged by a coalition of businesses that provide services and equipment to offshore drilling platforms. The companies sued, asking the judge to declare the moratorium to be invalid and arguing that there was no evidence that existing operations were unsafe.

The State of Louisiana filed a brief supporting the lawsuit, arguing that the moratorium would damage its economy.

Jackie Calmes contributed reporting.

Judge favored by BP has financial ties to oil industry

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/17/bp.judge.oil.ties/
Judge favored by BP has financial ties to oil industry
Abbie Boudreau and David Fitzpatrick, CNN Special Investigations Unit
June 17, 2010
BP wants a judge who has major financial ties to the oil industry to supervise oil disaster lawsuits.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
BP wants U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes to supervise lawsuits in wake of oil disaster
Hughes has strong financial ties to oil industry, has received large sum of royalties
Hughes to CNN: "Let facts be submitted to a candid world," a Thomas Jefferson quote
Lawyers who have dealt with Hughes describe him as "tough but fair"

Houston, Texas (CNN) -- The judge that BP wants to hear an estimated 200 lawsuits over the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster gets tens of thousands of dollars a year in oil royalties and is paid travel expenses to industry conferences, financial disclosure forms show.

Lawyers who practice before U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes say he's tough but fair, and a CNN review of his cases found he ruled in favor of oil companies only slightly more often than he ruled against them. But his connections to the industry have raised eyebrows at a time when BP is under fire for the worst oil spill in U.S. history.

Federal financial disclosure forms obtained by CNN show that since 2003, Hughes has consistently been paid annual fees from the oil and gas industry, mostly in the form of lease payments for wells and mineral rights on land he owns. None of the payments comes from BP, but his holdings include mutual funds that draw income from Anadarko Petroleum, a minority owner in the well now pouring up to 2.5 million gallons a day into the Gulf.

In some cases, the amounts are significant. In others, the payments are relatively small.

Oil giant ConocoPhillips paid him between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2008, the last year in which records are publicly available. In a note attached to the 2008 form, Hughes said he expected the amounts to be relatively similar for 2009. He gets smaller amounts from smaller producers such as Sun Oil, Everest Oil and Wagner Oil, which pay for the right to drill oil and gas from lands he owns.

The federal disclosure form does not require exact amounts, only estimates and approximate figures.

A legal expert on ethics, Indiana University professor Charles Geyh, told CNN that judges with financial ties to the oil industry should make their connections crystal clear.

"When you take it together, is there a concern that a reasonable person might say, 'Look-it, he's not a judge that happens to be dabbling -- he's in effect a participant in the industry he's trying to judge,' " Geyh said.

Hughes has been sitting on the federal bench in Houston since the mid-1980s, and BP has asked that he supervise all of the estimated 200 cases filed against it since the April sinking of the offshore drill rig Deepwater Horizon. The sinking left 11 workers dead and uncorked a gusher that has been fouling the Gulf for more than eight weeks.

In court filings in early May, BP requested Hughes be assigned to preside over the spill lawsuits because he already was assigned to one of the first cases, a lawsuit filed on behalf of Vietnamese-American fishermen from Louisiana. According to an e-mail sent to CNN, BP said the judge "is an appropriate choice to provide oversight of these cases."

The Department of Justice has asked that the suits be consolidated in New Orleans, Louisiana, the closest federal court to the spill. The sinking took place in the waters off southeastern Louisiana, about 40 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River.

BP would not comment on Hughes' financial disclosures. But the judge has held two recent meetings in Houston to discuss possible ethics concerns, a lawyer who attended those meetings told CNN.

"In both of those hearings, the questions have been raised about whether or not he should preside over these cases or whether there will be a conflict," Mark Lanier, a prominent Houston plaintiff attorney, told CNN. "In the second one, the judge explained he had listed online all of his financial disclosure information, so people would be able to look at and probe."

One particular case over which Hughes presided in 2009 is raising questions.

In 2008, Hughes listed royalty payments from about 10 wells leased to Devon Energy, an Oklahoma City-based oil and gas company. The amounts were relatively small -- under $15,000, according to his disclosure form -- and a source told CNN the payments were for a collection of nine or 10 wells scattered in land across two or three states.

In May of 2009, Hughes issued a favorable decision for Devon Energy in a dispute with its insurance company. According to an attorney for the insurance firm, the total amount was $3.9 million. Court records show that Hughes did not disclose his royalty payments from Devon at any point during the proceedings.

No one claims the judge has violated the federal code of judicial ethics, but Geyh says appearances matter.

"I think the best practice that is out there, and I think what judges across the country are encouraged to do, is that if there is any doubt, put some sunshine on the problem," he said. "Turn your cards face up, to mix metaphors, and make it clear to the parties what your potential interests are."

Hughes also travels widely and speaks to meetings held by the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, including one held in early June in the Canadian city of Calgary and an earlier conference in Cape Town, South Africa.

He's the association's distinguished lecturer on ethics, having delivered 10 speeches to the trade group in the past three years.

The association doesn't pay him a fee but does supply his travel, accommodation and expenses, said Larry Nation, a spokesman for the trade group.

Federal judges rarely respond to requests for comment from journalists. But Hughes told CNN in an e-mail that while he couldn't speak to past or present cases, he did quote Thomas Jefferson: "Let facts be submitted to a candid world," he wrote.

Lawyers who know him call Hughes a tough but fair judge and say the reference is to a desire for transparency on his part. But attorneys for environmental advocacy groups say that for BP to request Hughes be assigned to the spill lawsuits is "outrageous and unseemly."

CNN examined three years of Hughes' rulings on oil and gas cases, finding he ruled in favor of oil companies only slightly more often than ruling against them. As for other federal judges, a recent survey showed more than 20 federal judges across the Gulf states have a financial interest in oil and gas companies.

Several of them have recused themselves from presiding over cases related to the Gulf spill.

New Orleans' Cuisine Crisis: Is It Safe to Eat the Po'Boy?

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1996569,00.html

New Orleans' Cuisine Crisis: Is It Safe to Eat the Po'Boy?
By Steven Gray / New Orleans
Tuesday, Jun. 15, 2010

Not quite two weeks ago, on June 5, Sal Sunseri opened the first New Orleans Oyster Festival. Postponed a few years because of Hurricane Katrina, the affair, in the city's French Quarter, included contests for wine and oyster pairings as well as oyster shucking — basically, cracking open the shell to expose the slippery gray meat for slurping. On June 10, however, the Sunseri family business, P&J Oyster Co., which in 134 years had become the chief oyster purveyor to some of the city's most esteemed restaurants, effectively closed. Not only was it running short of the delicacies, but people were afraid to eat them. "We're mourning," Sunseri says.

Few cities treat seafood with the high reverence of New Orleans, where shrimp is often eaten for breakfast (with buttery grits), oysters for lunch (on a po'boy, or sandwich) and crawfish for dinner (étouffée). But those traditions may become a casualty of the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The oil spill that has brought President Obama to the region for the fourth time in the past month has closed nearly one-third of the Gulf of Mexico to fishing. It is potentially catastrophic for Louisiana's core $2.4 billion seafood industry, which provides much of the nation's fish, shrimp, oysters and crabs.

The region's angst is understandable. New Orleans' main highway, Interstate 10, is lined with billboards showing mounds of fried seafood. Castnet Seafood, a shop in the largely residential New Orleans East section, is still teeming with customers buying shrimp, fish and oysters to store in their freezers. But the owner, Kent Bondi, fears that soon, "that rush is going to come to a complete end." And there is the vexing question: Is the seafood safe to eat? A recent Castnet customer returned with a bag of fish, saying, "It smelled like oil," and demanded a refund. Bondi told her flatly that the catfish was farm-raised, so there was no chance it had been tainted by oil. "It's psychological," he says of the fear.

But people can be forgiven for their questions. The images — thousands of gallons of oil spewing each day from the Gulf of Mexico, plus oil-soaked fish, turtles and pelicans — are hard to ignore. It's scaring even some of the most ardent seafood devotees. "We won't be able to turn around our brand perception for five years or more," predicts Ashley Roth, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Seafood and Marketing Board. The board has launched a multipronged ad campaign in major newspapers boasting that Louisiana's seafood is indeed safe to eat because most of the state's waterways remain untouched by oil. Meanwhile, a delegation of local chefs is being sent to Washington State and even Finland to evangelize about Louisiana's seafood cuisine; a crawfish boil is scheduled for Dijon, France, this summer.

The challenge isn't just one of perception but supply. There are a couple of reasons for this. While an estimated 70% of Louisiana's coastline remains open to fishing, many shrimpers, oystermen and fishermen have signed up to be among the 13,000 people hired by BP or its contractors to clean up the spill. By one estimate, only 1% of the men who usually harvest oysters are actually doing so — mainly because the cleanup jobs can be lucrative (some pay $2,000 a day).

Meanwhile, many of the oyster beds have been closed as a precaution against the arrival of the oil. Some of the beds, however, have become victims of caution. Shortly after the spill began, authorities opened some of the vent-like structures built by the Army Corps of Engineers in order to push freshwater out toward the Gulf and keep the oil from entering the river and surrounding marsh. That meant sharply decreasing salinity in some of the waters where oysters are harvested — killing the beds.

Cliff Hall, co-owner of the New Orleans Fish House, one of the city's largest suppliers, is buying West Coast oysters and more imported shrimp than he'd like. "We want to support our local fishermen," he says, "but there's no other choice." Many seafood suppliers had depleted their stock, anticipating a robust fishing season, which typically begins in May. So the crisis, he says, "couldn't have come at a worse time." The pinched supply has driven up the price of oysters about 25% in the past week. "It's going to hit a stopping point of what the consumer will tolerate," says Hall.

For another sense of how the crisis is playing out, consider one of New Orleans' premier restaurants, Commander's Palace. The restaurant's shrimp costs have soared 40%, to about $9.50 per lb., since the oil crisis began. So far, the executive chief, Tory McPhail, has not passed along the added expense to consumers. The higher cost, he says, "forces us to look at our menus, be more value-conscious and do things we wouldn't normally do." One example: maximizing the use of shrimp. It is broken into two parts: the head and tail. McPhail's team breads and then fries the tail, which is the meatier half. The head is roasted at 400°, to dehydrate it, at which point it is ground into a powder. The powder is then used to significantly strengthen the flavor of seafood in a bisque, even with the decrease of shrimp tails in the stock.

So, the bottom-line question: Is it safe to eat seafood in New Orleans? Managers of restaurants, grocery stores and markets quickly point out that their livelihoods depend on serving safe food. Much of the seafood is carefully inspected using one of the most powerful tools: the human nose. And if the seafood looks odd, the chefs don't bother with the ingredient. Robert Buchannan, director of the Center for Food Safety and Security at the University of Maryland at College Par, offers a simple piece of advice: "If the seafood tastes like a petroleum product, it'd be smart not to eat it." The good news is, New Orleans offers a range of po'boy substitutes, like the muffuletta, with salami (cotto and Genoa), smoked ham, mozzarella and an oily olive salad stuffed into a thick round of bread. Sadly, it isn't diet-friendly. But not much in New Orleans is.

New Estimates Raise Amount of Oil Flow

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/16/us/16spill.html

New Estimates Raise Amount of Oil Flow
JUSTIN GILLIS
June 15, 2010

A government panel on Tuesday released yet another estimate of the amount of oil flowing from BP’s damaged well, declaring that as much as 60,000 barrels a day could be spewing into the Gulf of Mexico.

That is roughly 2.5 million gallons of oil a day, and it means an amount equal to the Exxon Valdez spill could be gushing from the well about every four days.

The flow was already categorized as the largest offshore oil spill in the nation’s history, but the new figures sharply increase previous estimates. Scientists on Tuesday estimated that the flow rate ranged from 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day — up from the rate they issued only last week, of 25,000 to 30,000 barrels a day. It continues a pattern in which every new estimate of the flow rate has been dramatically higher than the one before.

With BP capturing roughly 15,000 barrels a day, the new estimate suggests that as much as 45,000 barrels a day is escaping into the gulf.

The new estimate is far above the figure of 5,000 barrels a day that the government and BP clung to for weeks after the spill started, following the April 20 explosion of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. That estimate was made by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration using methods not recommended for large oil spills, and it came under attack from professors and advocacy groups who said the spill had to be larger. Time has proven those critics right.

The latest estimate reflects a possible increase in the flow rate that occurred after BP cut an underwater pipe called a riser on June 3 to install a new device to capture part of the oil. It is based on new information, including high-resolution video made after the riser cut, and on pressure readings taken by a device that was inserted this week into the equipment at the sea floor. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, was personally involved in using those pressure readings to help make the latest calculation.

“This estimate brings together several scientific methodologies and the latest information from the sea floor, and represents a significant step forward in our effort to put a number on the oil that is escaping from BP’s well,” Secretary Chu said in a statement. “As we continue to collect additional data and refine these estimates, it is important to realize that the numbers can change.”

The numbers came on a day when BP’s ill-fated relief efforts to stop the damaged well hit yet another snag, underscoring once again the fragility of the containment effort: lightning struck the vessel that had been collecting the oil from the well, suspending operations for nearly five hours from 9:30 a.m. Central time until 2:15 p.m.

BP said in a statement that the fire, which started after lightning struck the derrick — the familiar-looking tower used to lift the piping — was quickly extinguished, and there were no injuries. But as a precaution, the containment operation was shut down for about five hours.

The containment cap is still the most successful method BP has had in collecting some of the oil that has been leaking from the undersea well, and it has only been partly effective. A series of attempts by BP to cap or plug the well before June 3 failed.

The new calculation of the flow of oil, if it holds up, suggests that BP’s latest plans for capturing oil will be adequate, if only barely.

BP had only able to collect about 15,000 barrels a day at its peak with the containment cap, but the company has outlined plans to deploy new equipment so that it can capture a minimum of 40,000 barrels a day by the end of June, and a minimum of 60,000 barrels a day by mid-July.

If the new range of flow estimates proves correct, and if BP is ultimately found guilty of gross negligence in actions it took that led to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, that would mean the company could be assessed fines of up to $258 million a day. Those fines could come on top of payments for cleanup costs and economic damage to Gulf Coast businesses.

Fearful that the spill could ultimately cost BP tens of billions of dollars, investors have driven the company’s market valuation down by 48 percent since the spill began, erasing $91 billion of shareholder value. BP shares rose more than 2 percent during regular trading on Tuesday, but then gave up all that gain and more in after-hours trading, following release of the new flow estimates.

In a separate development, BP started to make good Tuesday on a three-week-old promise, declaring that it would release $25 million to a group of universities to pay for research into the effects of the oil spill. The is the first installment of $500 million that the company has pledged for a research effort lasting a decade.

Louisiana State University will get $5 million of the initial money. An additional $10 million will go to the Florida Institute of Oceanography, a consortium of 20 institutions with marine science interests in that state, including the 11 state universities. And a final $10 million will go to the Northern Gulf Initiative, a consortium led by Mississippi State University that includes four other institutions scattered across the Gulf Coast states.

In signing up for the BP money, the institutions were careful to negotiate academic freedom for themselves in deciding what lines of research to pursue.

“Clearly, our scientists need to be able to work independently,” said Vickie Chachere, a spokeswoman for the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, which heads the Florida consortium. “BP is going to be completely hands-off on this. There will be no strings attached.”

BP pledged that more money would be coming beyond the $25 million. It appointed an expert panel that will make recommendations on which institutions will receive those funds, with Rita Colwell, one of the most respected names in American science, as chairwoman. Ms. Colwell, an environmental microbiologist who holds a degree in oceanography, formerly headed the National Science Foundation and is now a distinguished professor at the Johns Hopkins University.

“It is vitally important that research start immediately into the oil and dispersant’s impact, and that the findings are shared fully and openly,” BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, said in a statement announcing the research money. “We support the independence of these institutions and projects, and hope that the funding will have a significant positive effect on scientists’ understanding of the impact of the spill.”

Jad Mouawad and Liz Robbins contributed reporting.

BP Is a Corporate Criminal

http://www.truth-out.org/jim-hightower-bp-is-a-corporate-criminal60476

BP Is a Corporate Criminal
Wednesday 16 June 2010
Jim Hightower, t r u t h o u t

Gosh, how quickly things turn. One day, you're a strutting peacock -- the next day, you're just another gasping, oil-covered bird.

In early April, BP was strutting about in full corporate splendor, showing off the $9 billion in profits that it had soaked up in just the first three months of this year. It was also basking in a corporate re-imaging campaign, depicting itself as a clean-energy pioneer and declaring that BP now stood for "Beyond Petroleum."

Since its Gulf of Mexico well blew out on April 20, however, BP has proven to be beyond belief. The wider and deeper that this catastrophe spreads, the more we discover just how oily this giant is.

From the time it was known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and set out to grab and control the rich petroleum reserves owned by what is now Iran, BP has been a recidivist global criminal. In the past three decades, it grew huge by swallowing such competitors as Standard Oil of Ohio, Amoco and Arco. Along the way, it has been implicated in bribery, overthrowing governments, plunder and money laundering, plus having established one of the worst safety and environmental records in an industry that is notoriously reckless on both counts.

And now, its rap sheet grows almost daily. In fact, the Center for Public Integrity has revealed that the oil giant's current catastrophic mess should come as no surprise, for it has a long and sorry record of causing calamities. In the last three years, the center says, an astonishing "97 percent of all flagrant violations found in the refining industry by government safety inspectors" came at BP facilities. These included 760 violations rated as "egregious" and "willful." In contrast, the oil company with the second-worst record had only eight such citations.

While its CEO, Tony Hayward, claims that its gulf blowout was simply a tragic accident that no one could've foreseen, internal corporate documents reveal that BP itself had been struggling for nearly a year with its inability to get this well under control. Also, it had been willfully violating its own safety policies and had flat out lied to regulators about its ability to cope with what's delicately called a major "petroleum release" in the Gulf of Mexico.

"What the hell did we do to deserve this?" Hayward asked shortly after his faulty well exploded. Excuse us, Tony, but you're not the victim here -- and this disaster is not the work of fate. Rather, the deadly gusher in the gulf is a direct product of BP's reckless pursuit of profits. You waltzed around environmental protections, deliberately avoided installing relatively cheap safety equipment, and cavalierly lied about the likelihood of disaster and your ability to cope with it.

"It wasn't our accident," the CEO later declared, as oil was spreading. Wow, Tony, in one four-word sentence, you told two lies. First, BP owns the well, and it is your mess. Second, the mess was not an "accident," but the inevitable result of hubris and greed flowing straight from BP's executive suite.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean," Hayward told the media, trying to sidestep the fact that BP's mess was fast becoming America's worst oil calamity. Indeed, Tony coolly explained that the amount of oil spewing from the well "is tiny in relation to the total water volume." This flabbergasting comment came only two weeks before it was revealed that the amount of gushing oil was 19 times more than BP had been claiming.

Eleven oil workers are dead, thousands of Gulf Coast people have had their livelihoods devastated and unfathomable damage is being done to the gulf ecology. Imagine how the authorities would be treating the offender if BP were a person. It would've been put behind bars long ago -- if not on death row.

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

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