But they claimed they did. Sounds like fraud against the government to me.
It’s not really surprising that BP’s competitors decided to throw the company off the troika as the wolves pursued. (“Throwing someone or something under the bus” is sooooo 2009.) It wasn’t an “act of God”: it was the act of an unusually negligent well operator. Glad that’s clear now.
It was a little bit more surprising that they ‘fessed up to the obvious: the virtually-identical plans they submitted about how they were going to stop a spill if one happened weren’t worth the paper they were printed on, even ignoring little details like listing as a resource a biologist who’s been dead for five years.
They submitted those plans in order to get permits. Making a false statement to a federal official in connection with an official action is a felony. Just sayin’.
Author: Mark Kleiman
Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out.
Books:
Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken)
When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist
Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993)
Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989)
UCLA Homepage
Curriculum Vitae
Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com
View all posts by Mark Kleiman
Why worry about felonious fraud when there's so much money being given away?
http://www.youtube.com/user/fiercefreeleancer
Just before the deceased biologist we get this: "The 500-page document [on the response plans for a major spill in the gulf], prepared by a private contractor, refers to measures to protect walruses …"
They forgot the ostriches.
The 500-page document [on the response plans for a major spill in the gulf], prepared by a private contractor, refers to measures to protect walruses …”
They forgot the ostriches.
I'm surprised they didn't mention keeping lions from attacking the platforms – important for worker safety.
That part of the plan must be working, because I haven’t seen any dead walruses washing up on the Gulf Coast.
If this was a particularly negligent operator, then these companies should have nothing to fear from increased oversight and more rigorous inspections. After all, if they indeed are meeting safety requirements they will pass such inspections with flying colors and no sanctions. And if they don't, then break out the perjury whip and slap them with the highest fines possible.
Equally, they should have no problem with increasing the liability cap, since they are essentially testifying that this should and will never happen to them, so if it does, it can only be because they've lied and they should bear the ultimate financial responsibility for not only their failure to prevent such spills (that they, again in effect, claim are preventable with their current efforts) but for their refusal to tell the truth about whether such spills are preventable within the framework of their own current practices or not.
Indeed, they should welcome regulatory and enforcement efforts that can, by their own testimony, be intended to prevent only disreputable operators, like BP, from participating in gulf drilling.
And they are admitting that if they cannot meet such stringent inspection regimes and if they are found in violation that they are indeed equally disreputable as BP.
I'm not sure there's a significant connection between BP's malfeasance and the spill they caused. There are other companies drilling in extreme depths, and they don't know any more about how to fix a blown-out well than BP does. Accidents happen; safety procedures can prevent some but not all of them.
The stories about what BP did wrong should not be allowed to drown out the reality, that an occasional disaster of this sort is an inevitable consequence of drilling for oil. A lot of people, both in the oil industry and in politics, would like it to.
Maybe we should be shutting those other wells down for the time being, until we have *some* clue about how to fix a leak. If the ocean goes, we go.
Anyone know what percentage of our oil comes from them?