Pat O'Donnell's 100 days in jail

mayo | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Thursday May 20, 2010 13:14 by Ed

Gulf Spill highlights context of Pat's protest

The current 'Gulf Spill' is only one of scores of such disasters in recent decades. The same pattern of reckless failures; drip release of information; cover-up and collusion between operators and statutory agencies is evident throughout. Protesters are invariably vilified or criminalized so that attention may be directed away from the really criminal irresponsibility. Read the following quotes from highly credible sources and remember Pat's 100 days in jail today.

“big spills are a thing of the past”
April 22, 2010 New York Times
Search Ends for Missing Oil Workers
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
…. The accident may also serve as a disturbing reminder to states like Florida that offshore drilling holds environmental risks, even though the industry has long claimed that big spills are a thing of the past and that improved technologies have lowered the chances of spillage.

"more than 500 fires on platforms in the gulf since 2006"
April 22, 2010 New York Times
Accidents Don’t Slow Gulf of Mexico Drilling
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
……… The federal Minerals Management Service has recorded more than 500 fires on platforms in the gulf since 2006. At least two people have died in gulf platform fires over the last four years, and about 12 more were seriously injured before the accident on the Deepwater Horizon.

“the company seemed to lose its focus on maintenance and safety”
April 29, 2010 New York Times
Oil Spill’s Blow to BP’s Image May Eclipse Costs
By CLIFFORD KRAUSS
……. But the company seemed to lose its focus on maintenance and safety, BP executives later acknowledged. The 2005 explosion at a refinery in Texas City, Tex., killed 15 workers and injured hundreds more. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined BP a record $87 million for neglecting to correct safety violations. Only a year later, a leaky BP oil pipeline in Alaska forced the shutdown of one of the nation’s biggest oil fields. BP was fined $20 million in criminal penalties after prosecutors said the company had neglected corroding pipelines.
Last year, when the federal Minerals Management Service proposed a rule that would have required companies to have their safety and environmental management programs audited once every three years, BP and other companies objected.

“Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak”
April 30, 2010 New York Times
BP Is Criticized Over Oil Spill, but U.S. Missed Chances to Act
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON and ERIC LIPTON
………… Officials initially seemed to underestimate the threat of a leak, just as BP did last year when it told the government such an event was highly unlikely. …. The day after, officials said that it appeared the well’s blowout preventer had kicked in and that there did not seem to be any oil leaking from the well, though they cautioned it was not a guarantee.
…BP officials, even after the oil leak was confirmed by using remote-controlled robots, expressed confidence that the leak was slow enough, and steps taken out in the Gulf of Mexico aggressive enough, that the oil would never reach the coast.
Officials from BP and the federal government have repeatedly said they had prepared for the worst, even though a plan filed last year with the government said it was highly unlikely that a spill or leak would ever result from the Deep Horizon rig.
“There are not much additional available resources in the world to fight this thing offshore,” said Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, in an interview. “We’ve basically thrown everything we have at it.”

“no one got to the control panel to close the BOP”
10 May 2010 The Irish Times TONY ALLWRIGHT
Coverage of oil slick catastrophe fails to address its cause
……… Fuelled by uncontrolled gas and oil, the conflagration raged for 36 hours until the rig sank. In the immediate chaos, no one got to the control panel to close the BOP. The riser and control lines broke free of the rig and fell haphazardly onto the seabed where the riser continues to spew the oil that is causing such environmental alarm.

“They have horribly underestimated the likelihood of a spill”
May 10, 2010 New York Times
New Ways to Drill, Old Methods for Cleanup
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and LESLIE KAUFMAN
….. For years, major oil companies, as well as the Minerals Management Service, played down the possibility of an uncontrolled blowout on the sea floor, arguing that safeguards like blowout preventers were practically foolproof. … even though a consultant hired by government regulators in 2003 had warned that they were unreliable. ……….. Jerome J. Schubert, an engineer at Texas A&M who has written extensively about undersea drilling, found in a 2005 study that “blowouts will always happen no matter how far technology and training advance” and that there were no foolproof safeguards to stop them.

“the well failed several pressure tests on the day of the explosion”
May 12 2010 The Financial Times
Panel reveals litany of failures on oil spill
By Anna Fifield in Washington
A litany of failures led to the catastrophic spill from BP’s Gulf of Mexico well, … “The safety of its entire operations rested on the performance of a leaking and apparently defective blow-out preventer,” Mr Stupak said. The documents also revealed that the well failed several pressure tests on the day of the explosion, but that at 8pm – two hours before the disaster – BP decided operations could resume, with Transocean apparently disagreeing.

“a decades-old relationship between industry and government”
May 11, 2010 New York Times
U.S. to Split Up Agency Policing the Oil Industry
By JOHN M. BRODER
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Tuesday proposed breaking up the agency responsible for both policing the oil industry and acting as its partner in drilling activities, seeking to end a decades-old relationship between industry and government that has proved highly profitable — and some say too cozy — for both.

"Managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists"
May 13, 2010 New York Times
U.S. Said to Allow Drilling Without Needed Permits
By IAN URBINA
Managers at the agency have routinely overruled staff scientists whose findings highlight the environmental risks of drilling, according to a half-dozen current or former agency scientists. ……. The scientists, none of whom wanted to be quoted by name for fear of reprisals by the agency or by those in the industry, said they had repeatedly had their scientific findings changed to indicate no environmental impact or had their calculations of spill risks downgraded.

“refusing to use well-known scientific techniques”
May 13, 2010 New York Times
Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say
By JUSTIN GILLIS
... But scientists and environmental groups are raising sharp questions about that estimate, declaring that the leak must be far larger. They also criticize BP for refusing to use well-known scientific techniques that would give a more precise figure. ………BP has repeatedly said that its highest priority is stopping the leak, not measuring it. “There’s just no way to measure it,” Kent Wells, a BP senior vice president, said in a recent briefing. Yet for decades, specialists have used a technique that is almost tailor-made for the problem.