New BP Oil Spill – Alaskan Pipeline – May 25th 2010
Posted: June 5th, 2010 by: h2
Didn’t want to let this one slip by. In case you missed it, a fresh spill, this time along the BP run Alaskan pipeline.
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.
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In one case, BP’s CEO of Alaskan operations hired a former CIA expert to break into the home of a whistleblower, Chuck Hamel, who had complained of conditions at the pipe’s tanker facility. BP tapped his phone calls with a US congressman and ran a surveillance and smear campaign against him. When caught, a US federal judge said BP’s acts were “reminiscent of Nazi Germany.”
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The company is deeply involved in our democracy. Bob Malone, until last year the Chairman of BP America, was also Alaska State Co-Chairman of the Bush re-election campaign. Mr. Bush, in turn, was so impressed with BP’s care of Alaska’s environment that he pushed again to open the state’s arctic wildlife refuge (ANWR) to drilling by the BP consortium.
BP’s OTHER Spill this Week, May 28, 2010
You know, there’s a familiar ring to that “procedures weren’t properly implemented” wouldn’t you agree? According to ROCKMAN over at theOildrum.com, procedures weren’t properly implemented on the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout, especially not on the days / events leading up to the actual blowout.
The volume of spilled oil is unknown. “We’ve estimated the spill is several thousand barrels,” she said. All has been held within the secondary containment, which has capacity to hold 104,500 barrels, she said. The amount spilled is “nowhere near” the containment area’s capacity, she added.
Alyeska is a consortium owned by five oil companies. Major owners are BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil. Unocal and Koch hold minor shares.
Reuters – BP-owned Alaska oil pipeline shut after spill
I know, I know, you’re saying, hey, it’s not fair to kick a man (BP) when he’s down! True, true. Should we wait for him to get up, start lobbying/bribing US officials again, get more regulations/enforcement removed, in other words, a return to business as normal?
You know, a lot of people thought dumping Bush was a great thing, but when they didn’t realize was the profound web of corruption and damage to our entire system happened under that blitz of free market/de-regulation propaganda we had to suffer through, a corruption which, like the corrosion of the BP Alaska pipeline, remains unseen until a catastrophic failure occurs. And of course, a lot of people thought Bush was a great thing in the first place… Now, we’re close to out of money, and resources are growing scarce, and the time to really deal with these issues in a timely manner is appearing increasingly distant in our rear-view mirrors…
I know our choices suck, I know Obama is surrounded by Ivy league trained Wall Street insiders, I know he’s part of the problem, but in our current state of politics, we can only chose from the less bad of two bad options. That’s the huge downside with a two party, non-parliamentary system, but it’s what we’re stuck with for the time being so we’ll just have to make do until we can find a way to really change things.