from 2009: BP may face third criminal violation after recent Slope spill

[The Straight Story]

BP may face third criminal violation after recent Slope spill

PROBATION: Officials not sure if pipeline split violates court terms.


As cleanup continues on one of the biggest oil spills ever on Alaska's North Slope, criminal and civil investigations are under way into the circumstances of the pipeline's rupture.
Click to enlarge

The criminal investigatory arm of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency joined with the FBI and others to examine what led the pipeline to split open in late November, officials said. An estimated 46,000 gallons of crude oil and water poured from a 2-foot-long gash onto the snowy tundra, cleanup officials say.

"The (EPA) Criminal Investigation Division is continuing to work in concert with our federal and state partners, and British Petroleum, to assess the situation associated with the Nov. 29 rupture," said Tyler Amon, the division's acting special agent in charge for the Northwest. "This matter is under investigation."

BP Exploration (Alaska) Inc. runs most of the North Slope's oil fields on behalf of itself and other oil companies and it operated the 18-inch flow line that ruptured.

"We always cooperate with regulatory agencies," BP spokesman Steve Rinehart said. "We have no comment on specific legal questions or specific investigations."

The EPA is working alongside the FBI in the investigation, Amon said. It's not yet clear where the federal investigation is headed, he said. FBI spokesman Eric Gonzalez, the chief division counsel for Alaska, declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Environmental Conservation is conducting a civil investigation to determine what happened and if BP violated any state rules or laws.

This spill comes at a difficult time for BP, which is on probation after pleading guilty in 2007 to a misdemeanor violation of the federal Clean Water Act. That charge stemmed from a spill of more than 200,000 gallons of oil in 2006 from a corroded pipe that BP had failed to maintain. The corporation paid $20 million in fines and restitution and is in its third and final year of probation under a plea deal.

That was BP's second criminal conviction in Alaska for an environmental crime. In 1999, BP pleaded guilty to a single felony count of failing to immediately report hazardous materials dumping by a contractor at the Beaufort Sea's Endicott field. BP eventually agreed to pay $15.5 million and serve five years of probation to resolve that case.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2009/12/19/1063296/bp-may-face-third-criminal-violation.html#ixzz0pNP1CvwP

[Bluzmann57]

1. What about charges for murder?

11 men are dead because of them.

[Poll_Blind]

2. Probation or...what? n/t

PB

[Scuba]

3. Yet Republicans stand on the floor of the Senate...

...to defend these habitual criminals and seek to limit liability to their victims. Really make you wonder who they think they're representing. Nah, I quit wondering in 1973.