Regulators blast Black Elk for oil platform fire, safety record
Another worker burned in Oil Platform Explosion Dies in Baton Rouge hospital - November 2012
|http://www.katc.com/full-coverage/oil-platform-explosion-november-2012/#.ULAAqll_3Hk.twitter
Dealpolitik: BP’s SEC Settlement Over Deepwater Horizon Is Lesson in Crisis Management - Deal Journal - WSJ
Some news on BP got overtaken by other developments this turkey week. But we at Deal Journal need to come back to it.
BP is paying a $525 million penalty to the SEC to settle allegations that the statements BP made in the midst of the crisis on the magnitude of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster were fraudulent. That SEC penalty may pale in comparison to the $4 billion settlement of the Department of Justice criminal charges also announced last week, but it is the third largest SEC penalty ever and paints a cautionary tale for those responsible for disclosure during a crisis.
The allegations in the SEC complaint are remarkably simple: BP estimated in three different filings and in several interviews that the amount of oil leaking into the gulf was 5,000 barrel per day. In fact, according to the SEC, BP had “internal data indicating that potential flow rates could be as high as 146,000 barrels of oil per day.” And several months later a government task force determined the flow rate was actually 52,700 to 62,200 barrels of oil per day. The SEC alleges BP never corrected or updated the misrepresentations or omissions it made in SEC filings.
Undoubtedly, during a crisis like the Deepwater Horizon, good information is hard to come by. And making estimates can be difficult, as can filtering data with huge ranges of estimates. But there are lessons from BP’s story on how to handle the uncertainty of estimates in a crisis:
1.If you aren’t sure, say so. BP made relatively little effort to communicate the risk its estimate could be wrong. By the time it made its third and final filing on which the SEC bases its fraud case, BP did say “Accurate estimation of the rate of flow is difficult,” but it never indicated in the challenged filings that it had other information suggesting the rate of the leak could be much higher. The SEC spells out 15 pieces of data, estimates and calculations that BP had received by the end of May “that showed potential flow rates significantly higher.”
If you just don’t know, don’t guess. There was no requirement to estimate the flow (although there was a lot of public pressure). If BP had just remained silent on the issue, the SEC probably would have had no case, unless inaccurate information leaked out.
Read and use your own boiler plate. As a result of legislation passed by Congress in 1995 providing a safe harbor for forward looking information, many corporate communications come with paragraph setting out how the forward looking information could be wrong. The legislation doesn’t apply to suits by the SEC, but explaining how and why one’s estimates could be wrong is good disclosure. And the courts have developed a “bespeaks caution” doctrine, which protects companies when they give adequate cautionary disclosure to explain why things could go wrong. That doctrine would have applied to this case. And the more detailed and tailored the forward-looking information paragraph is, the more effective it is in preventing liability under this doctrine.
In BP’s first filing challenged by the SEC, BP did provide a forward-looking information paragraph. Not only did it not mention the flow estimates, it didn’t contain a mention of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. It was identical to the paragraph used for the prior earnings statement and the closest it came to Deepwater Horizon was a generic reference to results being possibly different due to “operational problems.” Even this boilerplate paragraph did not appear in the subsequent filings which were challenged.
BP omitted from its May 4, 2010, Report on Form 6-K the material fact that, by this date, its own engineers and scientists had generated or received at least six pieces of data, estimates, and calculations regarding flow rate estimates that far exceeded 5,000 bopd. BP also failed to disclose that, based on the internal data, estimates, and calculations, it was not accurate to continue to assert that 5,000 bopd was the best estimate of the amount of oil flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. Similarly, as of this date, for the same reasons, it was misleading to use NOAA’s 5,000 bopd as the “best estimate” as the basis for any public disclosure when BP had its own, higher range of flow rate estimates.
BP’s punishment a charade - SFGate
The Justice Department has entered into the largest criminal settlement in U.S. history with the giant oil company BP in connection with the 2010 disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history. BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts, including manslaughter, and agreed to pay $4 billion over the next five years.
This is nonsensical. BP isn’t a criminal. Corporations aren’t people. They can’t know right from wrong. They’re incapable of criminal intent. They have no brains. They’re legal fictions - pieces of paper filed away in a vault in some bank.
Mind you, I’m appalled by the carelessness and indifference of the BP executives responsible for the disaster. But holding corporations criminally liable reinforces the same fallacy that gave us Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission, in which five justices decided corporations are people under the First Amendment and therefore can spend unlimited amounts on political campaigns. Even if 49 percent of their shareholders are foreign citizens, corporations now have a constitutional right to affect the outcome of American elections.
We don’t know exactly how much corporate money was spent on the last election, but it’s a fair guess that were it not for Citizens United, the House of Representatives might now be under control of Democrats, and Senate Democrats might have a filibuster-proof majority.
The perfidious notion that corporations are people can lead to even more bizarre results. If corporations are people and they’re headquartered in the United States, then presumably corporations are citizens. That means they have a right to vote as well.
I’ll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one.
Can we please get a grip? The only sentient beings in a corporation are the people who run them or work for them. When it comes to criminality, they’re the ones who should be punished.
Punishing corporations as a whole often ends up harming innocent people - especially employees who lose their jobs because the corporation has to trim costs and retirees whose savings shrink because their shares in the corporation lose value.
Consider the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, convicted in 2002 of obstruction of justice when certain partners destroyed records of the auditing work they did for Enron as the energy giant was imploding. After the firm was convicted, its clients abandoned it, and the firm went under.
The vast majority of its employees had nothing to do with Enron but lost their jobs anyway. Yet the real perpetrators came out fine. Andersen’s CEO moved to a lucrative job in a private-equity firm, and other senior partners formed an accounting firm.
Likewise, the people responsible for the deaths and oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico weren’t BP’s rank-and-file employees or its shareholders. They were the executives who turned a blind eye to safety in pursuit of their own rising stock options and who conspired with oil-services giant Halliburton to cut corners on deepwater drilling when they knew damn well they were taking risks for the sake of fatter profits.
They’re the ones who should be punished. Failure to punish them simply invites more of the same kind of criminal negligence by executives more interested in lining their pockets than protecting their workers and the environment. (Just a day after the BP settlement was announced, an oil rig exploded off the Louisiana coast, leaving one worker dead, one still missing and two others in critical condition.)
But the Justice Department’s criminal settlement with BP gives these top executives a free pass, allowing the public to believe justice has been done.
Instead of going after the real criminals, the Justice Department has gone after the schleps who got caught up in the mess. It filed manslaughter charges against two BP rig supervisors for allegedly ignoring warning signs of the blowout that set fire to the rig, which later sank. The department also filed obstruction of justice charges against a former BP vice president who allegedly lied to Congress when he repeated BP’s public claim that the leak was limited to 5,000 barrels of oil per day when in fact it was more than 60,000 barrels.
The Justice Department’s $4 billion criminal settlement with BP isn’t big enough to affect the oil giant anyway. BP’s market capitalization is $128 billion. The day the settlement was announced, BP’s stock price closed at $40.30 a share, up 0.35 percent from the day before.
BP temporarily suspended from new US gov’t contracts -
2 things, it’s temporary and it’s about NEW contacts.
Looks like the practice of Grand Isle Shipyard is to hire foreign workers at low wages, keep them in cramped, substandard quarters, and likely not give them much in the way of safety training. Nope, never seen that happen before…
Coast Guard approves underwater another inspection of BP well, Deepwater Horizon wreckage for oil | NOLA.com
Provides description plus link to two ROV videos from last inspection when cofferdam was seeping oil.
Lifting BP ban will be more than simple agreement: source | Fox Business
http://www.foxbusiness.com/news/2012/11/29/lifting-bp-ban-will-be-more-than-simple-agreement-source/
WASHINGTON – U.S. officials were surprised that BP Plc suggested an agreement would soon be ready to lift a suspension imposed this week on the company’s obtaining new federal contracts, a government source said on Thursday.
“It caught us off guard,” the source said. “It’s not the case that there is an administrative agreement that is ready to go out the door right now,” the source said, adding that any administrative agreement will only be part of a several-step process that could take months.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday suspended BP from obtaining new U.S. contracts over its “lack of business integrity” following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon accident, that killed 11 men and caused the biggest ever U.S. offshore oil spill.
BP responded with a statement indicating that the EPA had informed the company it was preparing an administrative agreement that would “effectively resolve and lift this temporary suspension,” and that the EPA said the draft agreement would be available soon.
The U.S. ban does not end the company’s existing contracts. But, if it lingers, it could imperil BP’s position as a top U.S. offshore oil and gas producer and as the U.S. military’s leading fuel supplier.
NUMBER OF STEPS
While the ban is temporary, it could be months before BP is allowed to obtain new contracts, including oil leases off the Gulf of Mexico, because an administrative agreement is just one of a number of steps BP and the U.S. government must work through, the source said.
For instance, the November 15 plea bargain agreement between BP and the U.S. government, in which the British energy giant will pay $4.5 billion in penalties, still needs to be finalized by the court. A date for that action has not been set.
Once it is, BP has 60 days to send a remedial plan to the Department of Justice and the EPA laying out how it plans to meet all of the stipulations in the plea agreement.
The agencies will review the plan and are likely to send it back to BP with proposed changes. The plan could go back and forth among all three parties before a final plan agreed to by all sides is reached.
“BP’s saying there is some kind of administrative agreement to lift the suspension in the short term is not technically accurate,” the source said. “They have some work to do.”
Washington, is not attempting to create a long, drawn out process to lift the ban, the source said. On the other hand, it is not clear when the draft agreement will be sent to BP, the source said.
The EPA did not say how long the process would take when it announced the ban on Wednesday, but an official said government wide suspensions generally do not exceed 18 months. The official also warned they can go longer if civil cases against BP are not settled.
BP did not make any bids in a Gulf of Mexico lease sale held Wednesday. The next Gulf of Mexico lease sale is scheduled for March. BP would also have to sit that sale out if the ban is not lifted.
A spokeswoman for BP said the company had no comment.
(Reporting by Timothy Gardner; Editing by Theodore d’Afflisio)
Deepwater horizon case: BP oil workers plead not guilty to manslaughter - News update–Summarizes several issues to current status.
Two BP workers have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter charges stemming from the 2010 oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, as the British energy giant was suspended from winning US government contracts.
Robert Kaluza, 62, and Donald Vidrine, 65, were the highest ranking supervisors onboard the Deepwater Horizon rig at the time of the explosion that killed 11 people and caused one of the worst oil spills in history.
Prosecutors told a New Orleans court the on-site managers ignored “glaring red flags that the well was not secure” and failed to take “appropriate action” to prevent the blowout.
Defence lawyers said the pair were being unfairly targeted.
“The problem with this is that Congress and others demand human flesh to pay for terrible casualties like this,” Mr Kaluza’s lawyer, Bob Habans, told reporters outside the court.
“This time they chose Donald Vidrine and Bob Kaluza as the scapegoats for this prosecution.”
The men face up to 10 years in prison on each of the 11 counts of manslaughter and eight years in prison on each of the 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter.
Earlier, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced BP had been temporarily suspended from new contracts with the US government.
The ban will see the company blocked from bidding for contracts until it shows it meets US government business standards.
It does not affect existing contracts and it is unclear how long it will last.
The suspension comes after BP was hit with a record $US4.5 billion fine over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
In announcing the ban, the EPA cited what it called BP’s “lack of business integrity” over its handling of the Deepwater Horizon disaster.
The company has pleaded guilty to 14 criminal charges over the accident.
BP says it hopes to have the ban lifted as quickly as possible, and has been working with the EPA to prove it can meet federal standards.
“As BP’s submissions to the EPA have made clear, the company has made significant enhancements since the accident,” BP said in a statement.
“In the two-and-a-half years since the Deepwater Horizon accident, the US government has granted BP more than 50 new leases in the Gulf of Mexico, where the company has been drilling safely since the government moratorium was lifted.”
But BP’s woes look to be far from over.
It must still resolve a civil case on environmental fines that could amount to as much as $US18 billion if gross negligence is found.
It also remains on the hook for economic damages, including the cost of environmental rehabilitation.
OFF TOPIC POST. PLEASE XCUSE ME FOR ONE POST. (new project)
@1newstracker: .@olfashdeb
#Bayou Corne Sinkhole area residents demand Gov. Bobby Jindal meeting-No response
http://t.co/7aSsGO9Q
Sinkhole covers about 8 acres surface area. Was over 490 feet deep at one time. http://t.co/NJcqv7ky
These folks need help with spreading the word about this event–essentially a news gray out!
Could please help me jump start the cause…Share on Facebook, Twitter and email.
THANKS.
HELP NEEDED…NEW PROJECT…
Mr.Earl, Alcor, Alf…or anyone else…if you have any ideas on mitigation or resolution on this project
POST IT !!
( By the way, New Orleans Lady is on board with this as of yesterday.)
Thanking you in advance.INFOMANIA
Petition | Louisiana Governor - Bobby Jindal: Expand the area included in the Bayou Corne/Grand Bayou evacuation | Change.org
PLEASE DON’T DELETE THIS MESSAGE UNTIL YOU AT LEAST WATCH THE NEW VIDEO at the link I have sent you.
Also, read and understand that the residents are NOT trying to GET OVER on the company or the government.
Please help the people get some assistance to escape the hazardous Bayou Corne Sinkhole nightmare! The evacuation area has not been expanded to cover the areas known to be in a zone affected by natural gas and possibly H2S escaping thru a breach in the earth caused by the collapse of a salt cavern wall in the Napoleanville salt dome.
View the latest video footage documented by local residents of the natural gas as it seeps out of the ground into the bayous and all surrounding land area. This video is proof positive the leaks exists.
Sign the petition below in hopes that Governor Jindal will expand the emergency evacuation to match the area where it has been shown by core sampling to have natural gas seeping just 30 feet underground. The lease agreement in place requires an official declaration of the emergency evacuation zone BEFORE TEXAS BRINE IS MANDATED TO PAY and agreed to amount compensating residents until the issue is resolved.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Please SHARE this petition with folks on your mailing list. If you have already signed, simply FORWARD THIS EMAIL to those folks on your mailing list and delete this message. Signing the petition costs you nothing but the time it takes to navigate to the link and filling in a few blanks, hopefully making Governor Jindal aware that folks throughout the nation are closely watching how he handles this event.
[QUOTE=Infomania;90860]HELP NEEDED…NEW PROJECT…
Mr.Earl, Alcor, Alf…or anyone else…if you have any ideas on mitigation or resolution on this project
POST IT !!
( By the way, New Orleans Lady is on board with this as of yesterday.)
Thanking you in advance.INFOMANIA
Petition | Louisiana Governor - Bobby Jindal: Expand the area included in the Bayou Corne/Grand Bayou evacuation | Change.org
PLEASE DON’T DELETE THIS MESSAGE UNTIL YOU AT LEAST WATCH THE NEW VIDEO at the link I have sent you.
Also, read and understand that the residents are NOT trying to GET OVER on the company or the government.
Please help the people get some assistance to escape the hazardous Bayou Corne Sinkhole nightmare! The evacuation area has not been expanded to cover the areas known to be in a zone affected by natural gas and possibly H2S escaping thru a breach in the earth caused by the collapse of a salt cavern wall in the Napoleanville salt dome.
View the latest video footage documented by local residents of the natural gas as it seeps out of the ground into the bayous and all surrounding land area. This video is proof positive the leaks exists.
Sign the petition below in hopes that Governor Jindal will expand the emergency evacuation to match the area where it has been shown by core sampling to have natural gas seeping just 30 feet underground. The lease agreement in place requires an official declaration of the emergency evacuation zone BEFORE TEXAS BRINE IS MANDATED TO PAY and agreed to amount compensating residents until the issue is resolved.
Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter. Please SHARE this petition with folks on your mailing list. If you have already signed, simply FORWARD THIS EMAIL to those folks on your mailing list and delete this message. Signing the petition costs you nothing but the time it takes to navigate to the link and filling in a few blanks, hopefully making Governor Jindal aware that folks throughout the nation are closely watching how he handles this event.
I sent you a PM.
Cheers,
Earl
. Is oil sheen in Gulf of Mexico coming from equipment at site of BP spill?
http://www.wwltv.com/news/Is-oil-sheen-in-Gulf-coming-from-site-of-BP-spill--183455641.html
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COME ON BP, quit being a bunch of lazy KNUCKLEHEADS. Salvage the damn cofferdam, bring it to the surface and back to shore once and for all...
Remove this damn device from the area, eliminate all future possibility that this thing will cause problems.
Start permanently eliminating all unnecessary hardware on the ocean floor...FRIGGIN' be done with this snake bit location.
It's not like it's free to check sheen sources, the repeated sheens are giving the industry a worse image...
The repeated sheen sightings are giving Internet pundits fuel for their theory that the cofferdam was actually
set onto another Wellhead way back when to hide a another leak.
I don't understand why the Incident Commander allowed you to leave the cofferdam there in the first place!
There were multiple assets on location capable of lifting and transporting the cofferdam back to
Shore when the Macondo final P&A was completed.Merry christmas to all of you !¡!¡!
Chúc ACE mua may bán d?t
HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL…WISHING YOU A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS 2013
Have a safe evening
JUDGE BARBIER
et al and All Actions
UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT EASTER DISTRICT OF LOUISIANA
In Re: Oil Spill by the Oil Rig “Deepwater * Horizon” in the Gulf of Mexico, on * April 20, 2010 *
New Leak at BP Deepwater Horizon Well? - St. Petersburg Environmental News | Examiner.com
http://www.examiner.com/article/new-leak-at-bp-deepwater-horizon-well-1
On September 19, 2010 the Deepwater Horizon well was closed and covered with concrete.
On 12-16-12, the Coast Guard completed their investigation of oil leakage from the BP oil well. The area has been under satellite surveillance since the spill, and recently satellite images showed an oil sheen on the waters around the well, which prompted the EPA investigation.
The Coast Guard sent Remote Operated Vehicles (ROVs) to investigate but the ROV examination did not detect any leakage; rather it found the BP well is sealed tight with no leakage.
The Coast Guard collected samples of a substance that apparently produced the sheen seen on the satellite images, but that substance reportedly does not share any similarities with petroleum. Analysis of the samples is expected to take about 5 weeks. In the interim, satellite surveillance of the area is continuing.
It is possible the leak could be a natural leak of crude oil, since every a minimum of approximately 1,200,000 gallons of oil are released into the Gulf by natural seepage. (USGS Report, p 143).
BP tells Halliburton to come clean - UPI.com
http://m.upi.com/story/UPI-86881357307379/
BP tells Halliburton to come clean
HOUSTON, Jan. 4 (UPI) – British energy company BP accused oil services company Halliburton of skirting its responsibilities in the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Transocean Deepwater Inc., owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig, leased to BP, agreed to pay more than $1 billion in fines and penalties for the BP oil spill, the U.S. Justice Department said Thursday. The company agreed to plead guilty to criminal charges, paying $400 million in fines, as well as another $1 billion in civil penalties for violations of the Clean Water Act.
Around 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico before a capping system plugged the leaking well in late 2010. The explosion that razed the rig left 11 workers dead and 17 others injured.
BP, in a statement, said the Transocean settlement shows the company played a major role in the disaster.
“Transocean is finally starting, more than two-and-a-half years after the accident, to do its part for the Gulf Coast,” the company said in a statement. “Unfortunately, Halliburton continues to deny its significant role in the accident, including its failure to adequately cement and monitor the well.”
BP last year claimed Halliburton destroyed test results regarding cement used to seal the Macondo well beneath the rig. Halliburton said the charges are baseless.
There was no public comment from Halliburton on the Transocean settlement. Transocean said the settlement agreements “remove much of the uncertainty associated with the accident.”
BP in November agreed to plead guilty to 14 criminal charges stemming from the accident as well as to $4 billion in fines and penalties.
Transocean admits Deepwater Horizon guilt | ShareCast
http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=20602580
P
LONDON (SHARECAST) - Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, has agreed a 1.4bn dollar settlement with the US government.
The Swiss-based company will pay $400m in criminal penalties and a $1bn civil fine after pleading guilty to violating the Clean Water Act.
The rig, which was leased by BP, exploded on 20th April 2010, killing 11 workers and leading to one of the worst environmental disasters in US history.
“Transocean’s rig crew accepted the direction of BP well site leaders to proceed in the face of clear danger signs — at a tragic cost to many of them,” said Lanny A. Breuer, Assistant Attorney General at the US Justice Department.
The two firms has previously blamed each other for the disaster, which happened when methane gas escaped from the well into the rig, causing a series of explosions.
Two days later the rig sank, leaving oil gushing from the well into the sea for three months.
The companies argued over who was responsible for mis-interpreting a negative pressure test that could have warned of the danger from the well.
In July 2012, US Chemical Safety Board released a report blaming both firms for having inadequate safety rules.
The Justice Department said Transocean had admitted that members of its crew onboard the Deepwater Horizon, acting at the direction of BP staff, were negligent in failing fully to investigate clear indications that the Macondo well was not secure and that oil and gas were flowing into the well.
A statement from Transocean read: “These important agreements, which the company believes to be in the best interest of its shareholders and employees, remove much of the uncertainty associated with the accident.”
The company said it would pay the fines over the next five years.
Transocean now has to take steps to improve the operational safety and emergency response capabilities at all their drilling rigs working in waters of the United States.
These requirements include certifications of maintenance and repair of blowout preventers before each new drilling job, consideration of process safety risks, and personnel training related to oil spills and responses to other emergencies.
The Department of Justice said these measures would be in place for at least five years.
The payout follows a deal BP struck with the US government in November In November, which will see it pay $4.5bn, including a $1.26bn criminal fine.
The oil giant has already spent $14bn on cleaning up the oil spill and compensation to local people and businesses.
Halliburton is now the only one of the contractors involved yet to settle with the Department of Justice.
Transocean’s shares rose strongly on the news as analysts noted the fine was not as big they had expected and the uncertainty hanging over the firm was removed.
It’s shares closed up 6.4% on the day in New York.