BP's OTHER Spill

From Greg Palast, back in late May:

With the Gulf Coast dying of oil poisoning, there's no space in the press for British Petroleum's latest spill, just this week: over 100,000 gallons, at its Alaska pipeline operation. A hundred thousand used to be a lot. Still is.

On Tuesday, Pump Station 9, at Delta Junction on the 800-mile pipeline, busted. Thousands of barrels began spewing an explosive cocktail of hydrocarbons after "procedures weren't properly implemented" by BP operators, say state inspectors. "Procedures weren't properly implemented" is, it seems, BP's company motto.

Few Americans know that BP owns the controlling stake in the trans-Alaska pipeline; but, unlike with the Deepwater Horizon, BP keeps its Limey name off the Big Pipe.

There's another reason to keep their name off the Pipe: their management of the pipe stinks. It's corroded, it's undermanned and "basic maintenance" is a term BP never heard of.

How does BP get away with it? The same way the Godfather got away with it: bad things happen to folks who blow the whistle. BP has a habit of hunting down and destroying the careers of those who warn of pipeline problems.

More here.

"No space in the press" is quite right. I did a Google news search for some more info on this smaller spill in Alaska, and it took me something like five or six pages of hits before I got this AP article picked up by the Huffington Post. Given the enormity of the Gulf spill, I'm pretty certain there's no corporate press angle here, no media conspiracy to quash the story. I mean, what's a few thousand barrels compared to hundreds of thousands? The Gulf spill is big, big, big news, and this relatively minor thing some six weeks ago in Alaska is, well, relatively minor.

But I wonder what else we're missing while the hole at the bottom of the Gulf spews black vomit into the ocean?

Let's see. There's the release of toxic emissions at a BP plant in Texas City two weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion kicked off the chain of events with which we are now dealing. Massive leakage problems back in 2006 with the same pipeline mentioned in the excerpt above. A massive explosion back in 2005 at the same BP plant with the toxic emissions I mentioned a sentence ago. And that's just what I've posted on my blog.

Turns out, I've been blogging about BP on and off for years, and didn't realize it until just now. Clearly, BP, as an organization, has utter contempt for safety and the environment. Indeed, check out this whistleblower statement:

Some of the employees, speaking anonymously, said BP follows an "operate to failure" attitude. Kovac said that means BP Alaska avoids spending money on "upkeep" and instead runs the equipment until it breaks down.

While this might be a good financial strategy for owning and driving shitty beat up used cars, it is insane when applied to the oil business. That is, when your crappy $500 dollar used Pinto breaks down, fine, just buy a shitty used $500 dollar Dodge. Nobody gets hurt, and maybe you saved some money on oil changes, tuneups, and spark plugs. When billion dollar oil equipment breaks down, however, you take everybody in the vicinity out with you, whether they have anything to do with the business or not--like I've said before, there's no margin for error with this shit.

But behemoth corporations like BP simply don't care. Damage to the environment, human beings, and businesses not related to the oil industry, from BP's point of view, are what economists call an "externality," that is, cost from an economic transaction imposed on parties who are not part of that transaction. Who cares if the Gulf fishing industry goes belly up? As long as it doesn't affect BP's bottom line, no big deal. Of course, the problem is when people subjected to a negative externality get so pissed off about it they decide to sue. That's why BP has been so agressive in keeping the press away from the sights and sounds of the Gulf disaster. That's why BP, as Greg Palast observes in the above linked essay, destroys anybody who would alert the authorities as to their chronic disregard for safety. After all, if there's no or little available evidence, it's much more difficult for third parties subjected to externality costs to win in court.

And that's good business.

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