BP (British Petroleum) is way more horrible an oil corporation than I’d ever thought. Before Deepwater Horizon BP had the image as being “beyond petroleum” but they are just as wed to fossil fuels as the other big oil leviathans. So tied to oil and the revenues that come from it that they will obfuscate and hide the truth.

Take this example -

If only BP had told us (Congress, safety inspectors, stockholders, the press, or anybody at all) that there had been a violent blow-out at their offshore rig in the Caspian Sea, then the eleven men on the Gulf of Mexico rig would be alive today. If only BP had confessed to the failure of its cheap-o cementing methods, ditto: These men would be alive. If only.

BP is responsible for the death of those eleven people on the Deepwater Horizon rig. But this sort of profit before life is ingrained in the oil industry. If it costs billions of dollars to fix a pipeline but only millions in fines after someone is killed then an oil company will do the latter.

Some people blew apart instantly, some burnt slowly. I know: I’ve been there, years back, when I was an investigator. I discovered that the giant energy corporation called Peoples Gas that moved natural gas from the Gulf of Mexico into Chicago had been warned by engineers to fix a dangerous pipeline design. The company decided it was cheaper to wait and pay for the coffins. After eighteen people burnt up, they apologized. They paid out a few bucks, including my fee.

That’s what your industry is like people. Forget all the PR spin and propaganda you see on TV about Chevron’s human energy. That’s all a lie.

So I’m a reader of the investigative journalist Greg Palast. I’m even more of a fan ever since I blogged about something  he reported on in 2007 which gave my blog 10,000 visits in one day. Not bad for a lonely progressive blogger.  The item I’m referring to was the “lost” emails that Karl Rove and his minions meant to send to the White House which Palast obtained.

I  know because I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. Who says this job ain’t fun?

This is why I’m a believer in what Larry Beinhart calls fog facts. Sure all I did was comment on something but in doing that I got the word out to a wider audience. With that history in mind I find myself reading Palast’s latest book Vulture’s Picnic and let me tell you this book is like a thrill ride. In reporting on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Palast makes us aware of some of the oil company’s extra curricular activities.

BP’s response was to hire a team of former CIA spooks to trail him. They tapped his phone. They broke into his house. They set honey traps, women lesser men would not pass up, but Hamel is unnaturally faithful to his wife. Then, when Hamel set up a meeting with a Congressman in Washington, BP’s Alaska CEOs went nuts trying to figure out which whistle Hamel would blow. BP’s black-bag crew ran a remote-controlled toy truck through hotel ventilation ducts and rigged the toy with wires for microphones to eavesdrop on Hamel. Unfortunately for the BP operatives, U.S. Navy Seals had set up a secret listening post in the hotel. The Navy’s espionage team flipped out when they picked up the BP microphone, sure that the Russians were onto them. The Navy agents traced the signal, kicked in the hotel room door, and arrested BP’s spies.

So let this be a lesson to anyone taking on British Petroleum. Make sure you sweep your house or apartment for bugs. You’ll notice here that I use BP’s old corporate name. The reason for that is they are not beyond petroleum despite what they may want us to think.

BP is paying the man in charge of overseeing its $20 billion victim compensation fund for its devastation of the Gulf of Mexico over $10 million a year. The choice of Washington attorney Kenneth Feinberg to manage the fund in June 2010 was widely lauded at the time…

via BP Paying ‘Independent’ Disaster Claim Administrator $10 Million A Year.

How sad is this? I’m sure that the ten million dollars a year that the “independent claims adjuster” is getting from British Petroleum could well serve over 100 families effected by the Deepwater Horizon destruction. What about the people who perished on that rig? How much are their families getting? Shame.

I wonder where Mubarak is getting all that money to pay the thugs he sent out into the street?

Pro-Mubarak thugs charged into Tahrir Square on horses and camels in an effort to save the embattled Egyptian dictator. It was not long ago that the regime was being propped up by a different breed of supporter: foreign investors arriving on corporate jets with billions of dollars in capital.

The guilty mentioned are BP, Nestle, Procter and Gamble, Electrolux, Saint-Gobain and PepsiCo.

The appeal of Egypt for foreign investors is not just better access to a market of 80 million consumers. As in China, a repressive political environment has weakened the power of labor and kept down wages to the advantage of major employers, both foreign and domestic.

About a month after the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, Hayward left the region to attend a posh yachting event in Britain, and uttered the crippling comment just prior to the festivities. “I have to confess, at the time I was pretty angry actually,” Hayward told the BBC of the incident. “I hadn’t seen my son for three months. I was on the boat for six hours … I’m not certain I’d do anything different,” he added, the NY Daily News reports.

via Bulldog Reporter – Daily Dog | Previous Stories – Daily Dog | He Just Won’t Stop Talking: Tony Hayward Cranks Up BP’s Image Challenge By Slamming Media and Defending His Inane Behavior.

Ok. Mr. Hayward clearly you don’t understand public relations at all. Did anyone ever speak to you about crisis management? Did you ever see that photo of Bush overlooking the devastation of Hurricane Katrina from an airplane? Yep, you sort of did the same thing back in April. This was probably the worst ecological disaster to hit the gulf region. You had eleven people who lost their lives on that oil rig. These families are devastated and will never be the same again no matter the amount of financial compensation they may receive.  Yet Hayward thinks the media went after him unfairly? He feels they smelled blood? Would Lee Raymond or Rex Tilerson of ExxonMobil–as much as I dislike Big Oil –have reacted the same way?

“Before we went to work, I went down by the beach,” reads her entry from July 4. “There were dead jellyfish everywhere. Some of them were surrounded by foam. A seagull was by the waters edge, as the foamy stuff continued to wash up. There was also a crane that appeared to be sick. It didn’t look like it had any oil on it, but it just stood there, no matter how close I got.”

On the morning of August 5, Shirley describes spotting a dead young dolphin floating in the water. “As we waited for the VOO Wildlife boat to come pick it up, we noticed a pod of dolphins close by,” she writes. “Even with all the boats around, they did not leave until the dead one was removed from the water. It was very emotional, for all of us.”

via t r u t h o u t | Evidence Mounts of BP Spraying Toxic Dispersants.

I mean honestly how can you run all these commercials talking about how you care so much and that you will be here until the end. When you’re basically still killing everything.

Steven Anthony, President of the Maritime Archaeological and Historical Society in Washington DC, added that the wrecks – described as “time capsules” – could also be at risk from a potential spill.”There needs to be more research of what happens to spilled oil before drilling begins,” he said. “The oil industry and BP say that leaked oil floats. But in the Gulf of Mexico oil was observed in great clouds near the bottom of the sea.

via BP Well Threatens Ancient Libyan Sites | CommonDreams.org.

For crying out loud. Haven’t they got their hands full with the Gulf cleanup?

In a clear snub to the President, the Mayor of London Boris Johnson claimed this morning that BP was a victim of “anti-British rhetoric,” which he described as “permeating from America.” Mayor Johnson told the BBC’s flagship Today programme, “When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves.” The Mayoral view was echoed by former Conservative Party trade minister Lord Tebbit, who uses an interview in this morning’s influential Daily Mail newspaper to accuse Obama of “despicable” anti-British language. Tebbit accused President Obama on his blog of, “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan political Presidential petulance.”

via BP And The Brits – The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan.

You cannot seriously defend BP! I would not defend ExxonMobil or Blackwater/Xe ever! I realize BP is doing damage control and trying to reassure its investors but the truth is they’ve done something historically and horribly wrong. The Mayor of London is also treading too far in inciting nationalistic rhetoric.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The scope of the damage from the Gulf Coast oil spill is still hard to calculate, but here’s a grim tally: More than 26,000 workers and business owners along the Gulf Coast have filed claims so far for lost income.

BP (BP) has made payments already on over 11,600 of those claims, disbursing $35 million to fishermen, shrimpers, charter boat captains and others whose livelihoods are now in limbo. The company has 420 claims adjusters staffing nearly two dozens processing centers in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

via BP cuts checks for workers’ lost wages – May. 30, 2010.

Sadly, I don’t know what amount if any can restore the lives of all this people.

As efforts continued Wednesday to “top kill” the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, workers in the region continue to say they are being sickened by the toxic mix of crude oil and the chemical dispersant being used by BP.

via Workers Helping To Clean Up Gulf Oil Spill Are Reporting Illness From The Toxins- 05/27/10 | Workers Independent News.

This could actually fly right under the radar if no one picks up on this story.