[THS] BP Oil Spill: Count the Crimes

[The Harder Stuff in news and commentary]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=awDwwghB5ZXg&?huffbloomberg

Count Crimes Committed in Oily Gulf of Mexico: Ann Woolner

Commentary by Ann Woolner

May 26 (Bloomberg) -- At least one federal crime had indisputably been committed
when oil started spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and approached land. Another
criminal act became clear when the first oil-covered sea bird died.

Even if everyone involved in the Deepwater Horizon disaster did precisely what they
were supposed to do, if every crew member, each manager and all suppliers
followed every regulation diligently, the oil globs reaching shore and the deadly crude
covering pelicans signal crimes just as clearly as would a body with a dagger through
the heart.

“Someone’s going to be criminally prosecuted for this,” says David M. Uhlmann, who
for 17 years worked as a prosecutor for the Justice Department’s environmental
crimes section, including seven years as the unit’s chief.

The questions are: who, and for what crimes?

BP Plc tops the list of suspects because the company leased the rig, owns the oil and
to some degree oversaw the operation. But Transocean Ltd., which owns the rig and
supplied most of the staff, no doubt has its lawyers working defensively right about
now. And then there’s Halliburton Co., which cemented the well.

As for laws that were clearly broken, there are two that let prosecutors slam-dunk
convictions with no evidence of negligence or intentional wrongdoing. Many a white-
collar case has floundered on the problem of proving criminal intent. These
environmental laws make that unnecessary.

Environmental Statutes

The 1918 Migratory Bird Treaty Act protects fowl. The Refuse Act, part of the 1899
Rivers and Harbors Act, outlaws industrial discharge in navigable waters.

OK, they are both misdemeanors punishable by minor fines, but stay with me here.

Even a misdemeanor conviction would remove the $75 million cap on damages that
the Oil Pollution Act sets. BP says it will pay all legitimate damages from the spill,
regardless of the cap, but fisherman still suffering from the Exxon Valdez spill 20
years ago would urge caution in believing such promises.

Bumping it up a notch by showing negligence, prosecutors can win a conviction
under the Clean Water Act, and there’s every reason to believe that can be shown
here. Negligence means an absence of due care, say in keeping the blowout
preventer working to, um, prevent a catastrophic blowout, for example.

All right, a negligence conviction would be a misdemeanor, too, but it carries a fine
that could decimate any company charged in this catastrophe: up to twice the
damages the spill caused. And an individual charged could spend a year in jail, which
would seem a lot for an oil-company manager.

Proving Felonies

To get into felony territory is trickier. For that, prosecutors need to show that
companies or people acted “knowingly.”

Surely no one knew they would be wreaking ecological devastation on the Gulf of
Mexico, ruining a coastal fishing industry, crippling tourism or trashing beachfront
property values when they were operating the Deepwater Horizon, even if they took
a shortcut or two.

That kind of knowledge doesn’t have to be proven to make a felony case. A BP
subsidiary admitted felonious guilt in a deadly 2005 explosion at a Texas City, Texas,
refinery and when another BP operation spilled 200,000 barrels of oil into Prudhoe
Bay in Alaska.

Uhlmann, who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, says that if sufficient
evidence emerges, the government could win felony convictions under the Clean
Water Act by proving those in charge knew the operation had serious problems and
continued to run it anyway.

Eyewitness Account

That seems the case laid out in a CBS “60 Minutes” interview with Mike Williams, chief
electronics technician on the Deepwater Horizon.

He said that before the explosion, the rig’s blowout preventer coughed up broken
pieces of a crucial rubber seal. A supervisor said it was no big deal.

And when a crew member’s error broke part of the blowout device’s emergency
backup system, no one much cared about that, either, Williams told “60 Minutes.”

Then, when it came time to close the new well in preparation for pumping, a BP
manager demanded the crew use a quicker, riskier way than the standard process
the Transocean manager had planned, according to Williams.

It could turn out that Williams’ account is flawed, or that none of those problems led
to the explosion, or that BP and Transocean did everything they reasonably could to
prevent the 11 deaths and thousands of barrels of still-spewing oil that’s now coating
wildlife and washing ashore on beaches and wetlands.

Legal Thresholds

But if someone filed a false report, manipulated a test result or showed any attempt
at deceit, that would ratchet up a Clean Water case to a felony. It could also trigger
prosecution for fraud, obstructing justice or filing a false statement against the
individuals involved, as well as their employer.

In this case prosecutors will be driven to be as aggressive as possible, says Uhlmann,
given the gravity of what’s occurred and previous convictions by BP subsidiaries, all of
them accompanied by promises to do better.

And yet, even the misdemeanor crimes we know were committed led to a calamitous
result. They could also lead to ruinous penalties to those responsible.

(Ann Woolner is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Ann Woolner in Atlanta at
awoolner at bloomberg.net
Last Updated: May 25, 2010 21:00 EDT
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BP Fails Booming School 101
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx8kMXufu3w
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_oil_spill_new_plume

New, giant sea oil plume seen in Gulf

By MATTHEW BROWN and JASON DEAREN, Associated Press Writers Matthew Brown
And Jason Dearen, Associated Press Writers ­ Thu May 27, 4:42 pm ET

NEW ORLEANS ­ Marine scientists have discovered a massive new plume of what
they believe to be oil deep beneath the Gulf of Mexico, stretching 22 miles (35
kilometers) from the leaking wellhead northeast toward Mobile Bay, Alabama.

The discovery by researchers on the University of South Florida College of Marine
Science's Weatherbird II vessel is the second significant undersea plume recorded
since the Deepwater Horizon exploded on April 20.

The thick plume was detected just beneath the surface down to about 3,300 feet
(1,000 meters), and is more than 6 miles (9.6 kilometers) wide, said David Hollander,
associate professor of chemical oceanography at the school.

Hollander said the team detected the thickest amount of hydrocarbons, likely from
the oil spewing from the blown out well, at about 1,300 feet (nearly 400 meters) in
the same spot on two separate days this week.

The discovery was important, he said, because it confirmed that the substance found
in the water was not naturally occurring and that the plume was at its highest
concentration in deeper waters. The researchers will use further testing to determine
whether the hydrocarbons they found are the result of dispersants or the
emulsification of oil as it traveled away from the well.

The first such plume detected by scientists stretched from the well southwest toward
the open sea, but this new undersea oil cloud is headed miles inland into shallower
waters where many fish and other species reproduce.

The researchers say they are worried these undersea plumes may be the result of
the unprecedented use of chemical dispersants to break up the oil a mile undersea at
the site of the leak.

Hollander said the oil they detected has dissolved into the water, and is no longer
visible, leading to fears from researchers that the toxicity from the oil and dispersants
could pose a big danger to fish larvae and creatures that filter the waters for food.

"There are two elements to it," Hollander said. "The plume reaching waters on the
continental shelf could have a toxic effect on fish larvae, and we also may see a long
term response as it cascades up the food web."

Dispersants contain surfactants, which are similar to dishwashing soap.

A Louisiana State University researcher who has studied their effects on marine life
said that by breaking oil into small particles, surfactants make it easier for fish and
other animals to soak up the oil's toxic chemicals. That can impair the animals'
immune systems and cause reproductive problems.

"The oil's not at the surface, so it doesn't look so bad, but you have a situation where
it's more available to fish," said Kevin Kleinow, a professor in LSU's school of
veterinary medicine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_gulf_oil_spill_washington;_ylt=A0wNdO7mof5LxXsBcAys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNzM2xlODJvBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMTAwNTI3L3VzX2d1bGZfb2lsX3NwaWxsX3dhc2hpbmd0b24EY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMyBHBvcwM3BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNjaGllZm9mbXVjaC0-

Chief of much-criticized gov't oil agency quits
By ERICA WERNER and MATTHEW DALY, Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON - The head of the troubled agency that oversees offshore drilling resigned under pressure Thursday as President Barack Obama moved more aggressively to take charge of the Gulf oil spill.

The departure of Minerals Management Service Director Elizabeth Birnbaum was announced by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a congressional hearing where Birnbaum had been scheduled to testify but didn't show up.

Birnbaum resigned "on her own terms and her own volition," Salazar told lawmakers.
The development came just hours before Obama was set to announce strong new measures in response to the spill, including extending a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling and canceling some planned lease sales entirely. The midday White House event was to be Obama's first press conference since the Gulf of Mexico well began spewing oil.

Birnbaum, who had led MMS since July 2009, left after she and her agency came under withering criticism from lawmakers of both parties over allegedly lax oversight of drilling and cozy ties with industry. Salazar recently announced he was radically restructuring the agency into three separate parts.

In a three-sentence resignation letter to Salazar, Birnbaum wrote: "As you move forward with the reorganization of Minerals Management Service you will be requiring three new leaders ... I wish you every good fortune in the reorganization of the bureau."

In the wake of an Inspector General's report alleging corruption at her agency during the previous administration, and indications that problems extended into the current one, Birnbaum's departure didn't satisfy some lawmakers.

"The departure of Elizabeth Birnbaum from MMS does not address the root problem. She has only been the public face of MMS for 11 months and the most serious allegations occurred prior to her tenure," said Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

"This might on the surface be a good start but must not be the end game," Rahall said.

It was a day of fast-moving developments in Washington and in the Gulf, where engineers were watching for signs of success from the latest attempt to stanch the leak five weeks into the catastrophe. The so-called "top kill" technique of pumping heavy materials onto the leak appeared to make progress. At the same time, new estimates released by a team of scientists showed the spill has surpassed the Exxon Valdez as the worst in U.S. history, growing to nearly 19 million gallons according to the most conservative estimate.

Obama planned to announce that a moratorium on new deepwater oil drilling permits will be continued for six months while a presidential commission investigates the disaster, a White House aide said.

Controversial lease sales off the coast of Alaska will be delayed pending the results of the commission's investigation, and lease sales planned in the Western Gulf and off the coast of Virginia will be canceled, the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity ahead of Obama's news conference.

Those steps, along with new oversight and safety standards also to be announced, are the result of a 30-day safety review of offshore drilling conducted by Salazar at Obama's direction. Salazar briefed Obama on its conclusions Wednesday night.

The new announcements signaled a fundamental shift in the administration's policies on offshore drilling, which Obama promoted and hoped to expand prior to the spill. It was just in March that Obama announced a new policy on offshore drilling, throwing open a huge swath of East Coast waters and other protected areas in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico to drilling. That expansion now looks like it will be dramatically rolled back for some time to come.

Obama will travel to the Gulf Coast on Friday, his second visit since the accident.
The proposed drilling affected by Thursday's announcements include Shell Oil's plans to begin exploratory drilling this summer on Arctic leases as far as 140 miles off Alaskan shores. Now those wells will not be considered until 2011.

In Virginia, the lease sales that have been canceled were in an area of about 2.9 million acres 50 miles or more offshore. The sales had already been postponed indefinitely after the spill.

As for the Western Gulf, there was to have been a lease sale in New Orleans in August of 18.8 million acres, located from 9 to about 250 miles offshore. That has been canceled.
___
Associated Press Writer Ben Evans contributed to this report.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


Gulf of Mexico oil spill now worst in U.S. history
ROBERT, La. -- New oil flow estimates by scientists studying the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico would make leak the worst in the nation's history, far bigger than 11 million gallons that spilled in the Exxon Valdez disaster. U.S. Geological Survey Director Dr. Marcia McNutt says the results are preliminary, but two teams using different methods determined the well that exploded April 20 and sank two days later has spilled between 17 and 39 million gallons:

http://link.email.washingtonpost.com/r/SFBD1U/EM8H4/VIGMK/R0R0W4/W26FN/1G/t


BP's Photo Blockade of the Gulf Oil Spill
Gerald Herbert / AP

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/05/26/the-missing-oil-spill-photos.html


Jean-Michel Cousteau (center) was turned away from a wildlife sanctuary by the U.S. Coast Guard after they discovered that an AP photographer was on board.

As BP makes its latest attempt to plug its gushing oil well, news photographers are complaining that their efforts to document the slow-motion disaster in the Gulf of Mexico are being thwarted by local and federal officials-working with BP-who are blocking access to the sites where the effects of the spill are most visible. More than a month into the disaster, a host of anecdotal evidence is emerging from reporters, photographers, and TV crews in which BP and Coast Guard officials explicitly target members of the media, restricting and denying them access to oil-covered beaches, staging areas for clean-up efforts, and even flyovers.

Last week, a CBS TV crew was threatened with arrest when attempting to film an oil-covered beach. On Monday, Mother Jones published this firsthand account of one reporter's repeated attempts to gain access to clean-up operations on oil-soaked beaches, and the telling response of local law enforcement. The latest instance of denied press access comes from Belle Chasse, La.-based Southern Seaplane Inc., which was scheduled to take a New Orleans Times-Picayune photographer for a flyover on Tuesday afternoon, and says it was denied permission once BP officials learned that a member of the press would be on board.

"We are not at liberty to fly media, journalists, photographers, or scientists," the company said in a letter it sent on Tuesday to Sen. David Vitter (R-La.). "We strongly feel that the reason for this massive [temporary flight restriction] is that BP wants to control their exposure to the press."

The ability to document a disaster, particularly through images, is key to focusing the nation's attention on it, and the resulting clean-up efforts. Within days of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill, pictures of dead otters, fish, and birds, as well as oil-covered shorelines, ignited nationwide outrage and led to a backlash against Exxon. Consumers returned some 10,000 of Exxon's 7 million credit cards. Forty days after the spill, protestors organized a national boycott of Exxon. So far, no national boycott of BP is in the works, despite growing frustration over the company's inability to cap the leaking well. Obviously, pictures are emerging from this spill, but much of the images are coming from BP and government sources.

The U.S. Coast Guard insists that they and BP have gone to great lengths to accommodate journalists and "roughly 400 members of the media have been given tours of the spill on either BP-contracted aircraft or Coast Guard helicopters," says U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley, who is based at the BP command center in Houma, La. (BP referred all questions to the command center). "I understand there may be some frustration [among the press], but there is a constant ongoing effort to fulfill media requests." Mosley defended flight restrictions as a necessary safety precaution. Since the flight restrictions were expanded on May 11, private aircraft must get permission from BP's command center to
fly over a huge portion of the Gulf of Mexico encompassing not just the growing slick in the Gulf, but the entire Louisiana coastline, where oil is washing ashore. If a request is denied, aircraft must stay 3,000 feet above the restricted area, where visibility is minimal.

Photographers who have traveled to the Gulf commonly say they believe that BP has exerted more control over coverage of the spill with the cooperation of the federal government and local law enforcement. "It's a running joke among the journalists covering the story that the words 'Coast Guard' affixed to any vehicle, vessel, or plane should be prefixed with 'BP,' " says Charlie Varley, a Louisiana-based photographer. "It would be funny if it were not so serious."

The problem, as many members of the press see it, is that even when access is granted, it's done so under the strict oversight of BP and Coast Guard personnel. Reporters and photographers are escorted by BP officials on BP-contracted boats and aircraft. So the company is able to determine what reporters see and when they see it. AP photographer Gerald Herbert has been covering the disaster since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20. He says that access has been hit or miss, and that there have been instances when it's obvious members of the press are being targeted. "There are times when the Coast Guard has been great, and others where it seems like they're interfering with our ability to have access," says Herbert. One of those instances occurred early last week, when Herbert accompanied local officials from Plaquemines Parish in a police boat on a trip to Breton Island, a national wildlife refuge off the barrier islands of Louisiana. With
them was Jean-Michel Cousteau, son of Jacques, who wanted to study the impact of the oil below the surface of the water. Upon approaching the island, a Coast Guard boat stopped them. "The first question was, 'Is there any press with you?' " says Herbert. They answered yes, and the Coast Guard said they couldn't be there. "I had to bite my tongue. That should have no bearing."

Local fishermen and charter boat captains are also being pressured by BP not to work with the press. Left without a source of income, most have decided to work with BP to help spread booms and ferry officials around. Their passengers used to include members of the press, but not anymore. "You could tell BP was starting to close their grip, telling the fishermen not to talk to us," says Jared Moossy, a Dallas-based photographer who was covering the spill along the Gulf Coast earlier this month. "They would say that BP had told them not to talk to us or cooperate with us or that they'd get fired."

Some Gulf Coast watermen find BP's desire to limit press access obvious. "If there was a major fire in a warehouse, would you let reporters go inside and start taking pictures?" asks Peace Marvel, a charter-boat captain in Venice, La. Job one, he says, is to clean up the spill, and running members of the press around only gets in the way and makes things worse. "Nobody wants this marsh saved as much as we do." Since the spill, Marvel has turned his 15 years of experience into helping coordinate the logistics of ferrying BP officials around the Gulf Coast to deal with the spreading disaster. His current contract with BP lasts for 30 more days, and he says he's making more money working for BP than he did as a charter-boat captain. "I'm hustling for business," he says.

So are the reporters and photographers trying to cover the worst environmental disaster in the history of the U.S. waters. They'll have to do it without the help of people like Peace Marvel, and against the will of BP.

BP'S Deepwater Image Disaster

Download results here.
Zuzana Beluska

Zurich 19rd May, 2010. BP's CSR-oriented approach to crisis communications in response to the ongoing Deepwater oil spill has done little to mitigate the image damage the disaster has caused for the company. Media Tenor's data show that while the volume of coverage for BP has sharply increased in the wake of the explosion, BP's image rating has moved from essentially neutral to
over 75% negative. Here BP's image is not just a victim of the disaster, but also of the low level of awareness the company had prior to the explosion.
Despite BP's efforts over the last several years to position itself as "Beyond Petroleum," and its specific messaging strategy in response to the crisis that has focused on specifics such as the recruitment of fishermen to help contain the slick and promises that the firm would take responsibility for the accident and its consequences, BP had no opportunity to avoid significant impact on its image. Once the government assigned responsibility for the accident to BP, public anger was always going to unavoidably follow.

Some politicians have speculated that the Deepwater spill would be "Obama's Katrina," but Media Tenor's research shows that this has not been the case. Not only is the overall tone of coverage Obama has been receiving since the explosion only slightly negative, it is significantly better than the over 20% negative rating he received during the most heated part of the healthcare debate. In fact, when we compare the tone of coverage for Obama since his inauguration to the coverage that Bush received during his presidency, it is clear that Deepwater has not manifested as an image crisis for Obama and therefore will not have a comparable impact on his presidency that Katrina had on Bush's.

There are several reasons for the lack of Deepwater's significant impact on Obama's image. Not only has the immediate, clear threat to human life been significantly less as compared to Katrina, the tempo of the disaster has been different. Additionally, the media's rapid move into focusing on the corporate sphere's role in the disaster has helped to deflect possible criticism of Obama.

In the coming weeks the image impact of the Deepwater crisis on both corporate and political figures will continue to evolve. BP may face additional reputational challenges as images of animals impacted by the oil spill make the news. Additionally, Obama and his administration may come under more scrutiny as long-range decisions have to be made regarding mitigating the disaster's impact both on the environment and on the fishing industry in the region.

For now, the question is whether the Deepwater disaster will continue to command a high volume of coverage in the media. This is a long-term environmental situation, but whether it will be a long-term news story remains to be seen. How much coverage the spill continues to get may determine how quickly and to what degree BP will be able to repair its image.
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May 26, 2010






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