http://www.idsnews.com/article/2015/02/bp-tries-to-avoid-gulf-cleanup
[Holy Exxon Valdez, Batman! A major oil company not living up to its
commitments?! Trying to weasel out of what it owes?! Using the courts
as a means of stalling, and making it more difficult for legitimate
claimants to get restitution for damages suffered?! Say it isn't so.
Say it isn't just business as usual. Sigh.
This is why companies doing oil exploration, production, transportation,
etc. need to be required by regulators to put up financial guarantees
before getting permits sufficient to cover worst case scenario clean-up
efforts. And those finances have to be accessible to first responders
without approval by the company responsible. (If we take money from the
fund to get clean-up work started quickly, and it turns out the permit
holder was not at fault, we'll pay it back. We promise. Seriously, you
can believe us - we're taxpayers, not an oil company.]
BP tries to avoid gulf cleanup
By Kevin Jackson 2015-02-24
A United States judge rejected BP’s appeal last Thursday to pay a lesser
amount than the original civil fine of $13.7 billion for its involvement
in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon drilling rig explosion.
And while this has given me some renewed faith in the U.S. justice
system, I am still disturbed by the two-faced approach BP has taken
towards this spill. After spilling more than 200 million gallons of
crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico, BP took a hard stance on its intended
commitment to the Gulf.
In fact, BP’s CEO at the time, Tony Hayward, released out a video where
he stated BP’s intentions to clean up its mess.
“BP has taken full responsibility for cleaning up the spill in the
Gulf,” he said. But BP hasn’t taken full responsibility for cleaning up
the spill.
The sad truth of the matter is that BP only took responsibility while
the media spotlight was on it. Sure, they made those commercials where
employees were cleaning oil off birds, showing their
“commitment to the
Gulf.”
But when it comes to actually paying its debts, not only to the American
environment but also the American people in the region, BP is only
committed to its profit margin.
A report by Doug Inkley of the National Wildlife Federation published in
April 2014 shows we are nowhere near a clean Gulf of Mexico.
“The oil is not gone” Inkley said. “There is oil on the
bottom of the
Gulf, oil is washing up on the beaches and oil is still on the marshes.”
The fact that oil itself is still there is disconcerting on its own;
however, the truly horrific part of this is the loss of animal lives to
oil-contaminated waters. The report stated that more than 900 bottlenose
dolphins have been found dead or stranded in the oil spill zone, a much
higher number than the average expected to be found.
This isn’t the only loss from the spill. Untold billions of dollars were
also lost in tourism and seafood production, a vital industry in the
Gulf region.
And yet people have completely forgotten about this tragic event. If
anything, the fact that BP can even consider asking for a lesser civil
punishment shows the ridiculously short length of the modern
attention
span.
I’d very much like to blame this on the Internet and television killing
our ability to focus, but honestly the fault lies completely at our feet.
BP wrecked the gulf environment and handicapped fishing economies. This
isn’t something we should simply let go after some time has passed.
Reparations must be paid, and the judge in this case was absolutely
right in denying BP’s request.
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