[Corp. Watch] BP = Blood-soaked Profits: British Petroleum's greed costs others their lives

[Corporation Watch]

BP Spends Millions Lobbying as It Drills Ever Deeper and the Environment Pays

 Oil major British Petroleum spends aggressively to influence U.S.
 regulatory oversight, and many argue this has bought it leniency

By Antonia Juhasz

(Guardian [UK] Observer, May 2) -- Although the explosion of the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico last week was a horrific event, it was neither surprising nor unexpected. 

	BP is one of the most powerful corporations operating in the United States. Its 2009 revenues of $327 billion rank BP as the third-largest corporation in the country. It spends those profits aggressively to influence U.S. policy and regulatory oversight.

	In 2009, the company spent nearly $16 million on lobbying the federal government, ranking it among the 20 highest spenders that year, and shattering its own previous record of $10.4 million set in 2008. In 2008, it also spent more than $530,000 on federal elections, placing it among the oil industry's top 10 political spenders.

	This money has bought BP great access and, many would argue, leniency.

	"I personally believe that BP, with its corporate culture of greed over profits, murdered my parents," Eva Rowe testified before Congress in 2007, during the investigation into the worst workplace accident in the U.S. in more than 15 years -- a massive explosion at BP's Texas City Refinery in March 2005 that killed 15 workers, including Rowe's parents, and injured 180 others.

	The U.S. Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency, investigated the blast and released a devastating indictment of BP.

	"The Texas City disaster was caused by organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP corporation," the 2007 report found. "The combination of cost-cutting, production pressures, and failure to invest [in preventative maintenance] caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery."

	While enjoying the highest profits in its corporate history, BP implemented budget cuts of 25% in 1999 and 2005 at each of its five U.S. refineries. The safety board found a pervasive "complacency towards serious safety risks" at all of them. Thus, it was little surprise that the next big explosion at a U.S. oil workplace was, again, BP's fault.

	It also came as little surprise that the location was deep off-shore in the Gulf of Mexico. For decades, the vast majority of drilling from the Gulf of Mexico took place on simple scaffolds in just 30 to 200 feet of water.

	But in the past 10 years, many of the fields in shallower water have dried up, and the industry has become ever more flush with cash -- in 2009, for the first time in history, seven of the 10 largest corporations in the world were oil companies -- and more desperate for oil.

	So BP and the rest of the oil industry have lobbied aggressively to open new U.S. waters to off-shore drilling,  and to expand the access they already had. As a result, the number of rigs drilling "deep wells" (those greater than 1,000 feet) has risen dramatically, as have ultra-deep wells -- those greater than 5,000 feet.

	Led by BP, the largest producer of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil companies are breaking all records, and pushing ever deeper -- well past the point of technological know-how and safety.

	The trend is problematic for many reasons, including that drilling in depths greater than 500 feet releases methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in its contribution to global warming.	

	In September 2009, BP drilled the deepest well ever at its Tiber field in the Gulf at in more than 35,000 feet of water (farther down than Mount Everest is up). The Deepwater Horizon rig was drilling at just over half that -- in around 18,000 feet of water -- when it exploded.

	Anyone in the business will tell you that drilling at such depths is incredibly risky, even with the most conscientious oversight. As Chevron Corporation says on its website, "Navigating uncertain weather conditions, freezing water, and crushing pressure, deep-water drilling is one of the most technologically challenging ways of finding and extracting oil."

	In the words of Chevron spokesman Micky Driver: "It's lots of money, it's lots of equipment, and it's a total crapshoot."

	The oil industry will continue to use its vast wealth -- unequalled by any other global industry -- to escape regulation, restriction, oversight, and enforcement. BP, now the source of the last two deadly U.S. oil industry explosions, has shown us that this simply cannot be permitted.

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Antonia Juhasz, author of "The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry – and What We Must Do To Stop It" (2008), is director of the Chevron Program at Global Exchange, a San Francisco-based human rights organization (www.globalexchange.org/chevron).