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It’s difficult to quantify the harm in an environmental disaster. The Gulf is enormous and oil gushed from over a mile below the surface of the ocean. Because water and wildlife move, it would be near-impossible to find every bit of damage. Researchers found evidence of Deepwater Horizon oil in pelican eggs in Minnesota last year! To compound matters, the impacts are far-reaching into parts of the ecosystem that scientists don’t know much about. For instance, a substantial amount of the oil moved southwest of the Macondo well and settled into a deep underwater canyon.

But for multinational oil companies like BP, the profits are obvious, and they are high.

BP’s 2012 annual report indicates that Chief Executive Bob Dudley, who spoke at the CERAWeek Energy Industry conference yesterday about just about everything but trial, made $2.67 million last year. In the three years since the spill, BP has netted close to $40 billion, even after covering the cost to cap the well, run ubiquitous “our beaches are open” commercials, pay individual claims and pay the largest corporate criminal penalty by the Department of Justice.

Anchor-handling tugboats battle the blazing remnants of the off shore oil rig Deepwater Horizon. U.S. Coast Guard photo.

The law that governs oil spills is clear: since profits from offshore drilling are so high and the consequences are so dangerous, unsafe drillers who spill must compensate for all damage and face penalties. This helps discourage putting profits over safety.

Unbelievably, on the day of our panel, the Washington Post ran an editorial arguing that BP should not face severe penalties. The editorial posed the question, “How much is too much for BP?” In what must be a tagline meant for an April Fool’s Day piece, the editorial continued, “A bill anywhere near that large is impossible to justify.” This is precisely why polluters engage in willful blindness to legal requirements: environmental laws are viewed as somehow less legitimate than tax evasion, racketeering, or labor laws. But crime is crime.

Testimony from the trial shows that this multi-billion dollar corporation had an “every dollar counts” mentality that led them to take egregious safety risks to cut costs, resulting in the loss of eleven lives and over 172 million gallons of crude oil spilled in one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Misplaced sympathy for BP’s liability is akin to taking pity on Ponzi schemers facing punitive damages for their crimes. BP made calculated business decisions to take dangerous shortcuts in search of profit. The only way to prevent such behavior in the future is to balance the scales of justice so that the reward no longer justifies the risk.

Almost three years after the spill began, the Gulf’s dolphins are still dying in high numbers. Ask the Department of Justice to hold BP fully accountable so we can restore the Gulf of Mexico!

A photo of a struggling pelican coated with oil floating in the Gulf of Mexico now greets workers arriving at the Navy Archives Metro station, close to the Department of Justice’s Pennsylvania Avenue headquarters building.

We must hold BP accountable for their actions

For a corporation like BP – that has a net worth of about $81 billion and has reported earnings of $5.2 billion for the third quarter of 2012 (a 40% rise in earnings) – the statutory fines it faces for gross violations of the Clean Water Act are (please forgive the horrible pun) a drop in the bucket. It’s despicable that while BP just paid the largest criminal penalties in U.S. history, the amount was still about one billion dollars less than they earned last quarter alone!

What do teachers do to keep kids from repeatedly breaking class rules? They enforce the rules to the letter of the law. So what will adequately prevent corporations like BP from taking reckless shortcuts that harm the environment and ensure there is sufficient capital for environmental restoration?

Suuurvey says: make them pay! The responsible party must compensate the damaged interests (the Gulf resources and communities that were polluted). A robust settlement will deter future misconduct and simultaneously provide the critical investment necessary to repair and rebuild the Gulf.

B.P. = British Petroleum Better Pay

It’s encouraging to hear that the Department of Justice (DOJ) intends “to prove that BP was grossly negligent in causing the oil spill.” To walk the talk, that means DOJ must pursue the maximum penalties under the Clean Water Act and Oil Pollution Act, so the Gulf can be healed.

Take Action! Urge the Department of Justice to hold BP fully accountable for the oil spill. Stand with us, and support DOJ’s efforts to #makeBPpay!