BP Settlement is intended to bolster BP’s public relations, but the BP oil spill is not an isolated case, says whistleblower
4-30-2013
British Petroleum dumps oil on America’s Gulf Coast.
Kudos to reporter David Hammer of WWL TV in New Orleans. Hammer has just published an article exposing widespread cover-ups of Gulf oil spills. Hammer’s article begins:
It was something of an eye-opener when an oil company pleaded guilty to two environmental crimes in January. Â Not because the pollution reported was anything on the scale of the BP spill, but because of the brazen cover-up involved.”
The company, Houston-based W&T Offshore, admitted its workers had used coffee filters in October 2009 to clean oil and other minerals out of the water byproduct discharged overboard from their platform in the Ewing Banks 910 lease block, about 65 miles south of Port Fourchon.
They were filtering the oil out of the water samples that were sent into a lab and recorded with the federal government.
Meanwhile, the water they were dumping back into the Gulf on a constant basis stayed contaminated.
W&T also pleaded guilty to spilling oil into the Gulf of Mexico in November 2009 and not reporting it to authorities, as required by law. The company agreed to pay $1 million in fines and community service for their crimes.
I (attorney Michael J. Evans, publisher of this blog) set up a blog entitled BPOilNews.com the week after the Deepwater Horizon explosion in April 2010. During the course of the spill, particularly during the early days, I hired a journalist and dispatched a videographer to take video to document the damage caused by BP. I’m not the only one to document BP’s coverup, Mother Jones and Pro Publica were both very aggressive in covering the story of the BP oil spill and the BP cover-up.
BPOilNews.com sent a videographer to document the damage, but sheriff’s deputies acting at the direction of BP employees blocked his access. And it wasn’t just our blog, BPOilnNews.com, that documented the cover-up. Others reported the cover-up, ad BPOilNews.com reported on the cover-up (see Oil spill pictures suggest a cover-up on Grande Isle – sand being used to cover up the oil, published July 2, 2010 on BPOilNews.com. Our reporting about BP and the government’s violations of the public’s First Amendment rights was mentioned in a law review article by the Environmental Law Institute.
Alabama businesses deserve every penny they can collect from the BP Settlement
So if any of you think BP deserves a break when it comes to Alabama businesses filing claims in the BP settlement, please think again. BP has lied from May 2010 until the last time a BP official opened his mouth. BP does not deserve your pity; it should be held fully accountable for ALL economic damage it may have caused ANYWHERE in the State of Alabama.
BP’s most recent court filings have been multiple, repetitive motions asking the settlement judge to order the Settlement Administrator to quit paying “absurd claims” such as a $9.7 million dollar claim by a North Alabama paving contractor. BP has even filed a separate lawsuit against the BP Settlement Admiistrator, and has asked the appellate court to halt the payments and accelerate the appeal.
