EPA Gives BP ‘Get Out of Jail Free Card’ on 4th Anniversary of Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster

[Unknown Beatle]

Today is the fourth anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, which killed 11 workers and dumped more than 4.9 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico over a three month period in 2010.

You wouldn’t think that the London-based company that spilled the oil would get an anniversary gift from the federal government. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just given BP a big one. The EPA ruled that the corporation could start bidding on lucrative new oil leases in the Gulf of Mexico after having been suspended from doing any new business with the government ever since the accident.

That suspension was lifted on March 13 less than a week before the yearly government auction for drilling rights. The company whose negligence was responsible for the worst marine oil-spill in history won 43 new leases in the Gulf that is still fouled by million of gallons of unrecovered crude.

The Deepwater Horizon disaster was not the first time that BP was found culpable in a major accident. In 2005 the company was deemed criminally liable for a refinery explosion in Texas City which killed 15 people. Yet again in 2006, a Justice Department investigation found that BP had willfully ignored evidence of serious corrosion in its pipeline, which led in Alaska to the largest oil spill ever in the Arctic.

BP’s critics say this was not just a run of bad luck, but the result of an ingrained corporate culture which routinely put profits above safety. In an interview, Tyson Slocum of the public interest group Public Citizen said: “If ordinary people are found guilty in three felony cases, they will be imprisoned—suspension from contracts is a kind of corporate imprisonment.” However, under intense pressure from BP, which filed a lawsuit challenging the contract ban, and the British government, which filed a brief in the case criticizing the U.S. for its action, the company was just granted a get out of jail free card by the Obama administration.

More:

[msongs]

1. would this be some sort of surprise? nt

[bearssoapbox]

3. The surprise is that it took this long.

[mattclearing]

2. K&R n/t

[a kennedy]

4. 10 Animals Who Are Still Hurting From The BP Oil Spill

It's been four years since BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and sending more than 200 million gallons of crude oil gushing into the water. The public outrage has largely died down, as have the EPA restrictions on federal contracts for BP. But the devastating effects on the area's wildlife persist.

Oil is still washing up on the Louisiana shores, and severe damages to the ecosystem are still observable miles away from the Macondo well. The long-term impact of oil spills, unfortunately, reflects a sobering reality that we can expect to see for years; wildlife in the Prince William Sound has not fully recovered from the Exxon Valdez oil spill 25 years ago, and pollution from a 1969 Cape Cod oil spill was still detected as recently as 2010.

According to a new National Wildlife Federation report, over a dozen species are still struggling with disease, defects and deformities from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/20/animals-bp-oil-spill_n_5173016.html

Hard to believe it's been four years....