BP/ARCO HAS NO ENVIRONMENTAL RESPONSIBILITY

SPECIAL POST

Anyone who thinks that BP is getting unfairly criticized for the Gulf Oil disaster has not done their homework. Anyone who thinks that BP is the shining star of environmental and safety track records needs to take an hour or two and start digging around on the internet. Anyone who wants to come to the defense of BP/ARCO is either insane or an attorney looking to get rich. Eric Holder is definitely not the first government official to threaten a criminal investigation into BP/ARCO’s activities. 

So, why doesn’t BP straighten up its insolent corporate act? Because, historically speaking, BP has made more money by operating the way it does. With the hundreds of billions of dollars of operations they have around the world, they have figured it out that they can shave corners and cuts costs in all of them and, should anything bad happen in one of them they will have saved far more than enough to cover the costs, fines and legal fees involved. 

In Yerington, Nevada, its shuttered Yerington Anaconda Copper Mine is an environmental disaster that is polluting ground water with uranium and chemicals. For almost ten years, BP has stalled, stalled and stalled on the cleanup of the site. Many unilateral orders of consent have been issued by the EPA to prod BP into accomplishing what little it has accomplished so far. But, the magnitude of the problem continues to grow day by day. 

If you want a one-stop source of information about BP’s past misdeeds around the world and how it has handled that Yerington Mine disaster, check out www.yamsite.info. 

I heard the argument that, if we boycott BP/ARCO at the pumps, we could drive them out of business and then we, the taxpayers, would be left holding the bag for the cleanup costs in the Gulf. That’s very naïve. The plain simple fact of the matter is that BP/ARCO is not going to go bankrupt. It has dozens of operating divisions and can sever any one of them at any time, including U.S. operations, and never look back. They have associations and operations all over the world including Iran. 

We’re going to end up paying through the nose for this disaster anyway. They will fight in court every step of the way, and we’ll be stuck with the legal fees. Historically, you will see them fighting until some Court hits them with $500 million here and there and then they’ll threaten to appeal and offer to settle out of court for $100 million and they’ll get away with it. If they’ve spent $1 billion in the Gulf already on this cleanup, that is 1/25th of the money they make every year. That $1 billion will get written off against tax liabilities and we are going to therefore be stuck for it anyway. 

We would like to proclaim that we are not to blame for the way BP does business, but we are. We allow their cavalier attitude toward safety and the environment to continue; our courts and agencies let them off the hook much too easily, and we continue to buy their gas although they have been in trouble in several states for their pricing strategies.

As for me, I’ll be damned if I’ll buy one ounce of their gas; I’ll walk first.