NWF Staff Photo

Now, I am not a lawyer, merely a wildlife advocate who spent weeks in the Gulf both during the disaster and in the aftermath to document its impacts on wildlife and communities. But I really feel the need to clarify here, and while I don’t want to start another word war between Jerry Seinfeld and The New York Times, I have a few questions.

BP? The same BP that, along with rig owner Transocean and contractor Halliburton, the presidential oil spill commission found ignored critical warning signs and failed to take precautions that might have averted the Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 workers and gushed over 200 million gallons of oil and other hydrocarbons into the Gulf of Mexico?

The BP responsible for a spill zone where more than 8,000 birds, turtles and dolphins were found dead in the first six months, with the dead never found potentially 50 times that number and with dolphins still dying in higher numbers two years into the disaster? Those guys?

If we’re talking about the oil company that reportedly tried to keep media away from seeing dead dolphins, I’m pretty sure that was BP, right?

The same BP that gave public estimates that underestimated the spill rate by 53 times, then held back video of the gushing wellhead that let independent experts almost instantly give the public a more accurate spill rate than weeks of BP and government cover-ups?

Striped dolphins swim through BP oil, April 2012 (NOAA’s National Ocean Service)

The BP that was incredibly efficient at hiring boat captains (leading to their conspicuous silence) but comically inept at setting up an oiled wildlife hotline?

Stop me if I’m wrong, but this was the company that decided to conduct a giant experiment by using an unprecedented 1.1 million gallons of chemical dispersant to bury oil out of sight at the bottom of the sea floor, where much of it remains? My spider sense is telling me BP.

The BP who banks billions in profits each quarter but warns it’s gearing up to wage a long legal battle if asked to pay a penny more than BP thinks is “fair and reasonable”?

And if you go into Louisiana marshes today or look out on the Gulf’s surface, there’s still a good chance you’ll see oil belonging to, and I’m just talking a wild guess here, but I’m gonna say BP?

That BP? They think they can push us into giving them a sweetheart settlement deal? Really?

The National Wildlife Federation has written to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking him to hold BP fully accountable for the damage they did to the Gulf Coast’s wildlife, communities and ecosystems. It’s important that we get a settlement that’s not only just and fair, but timely – after Alaska’s Exxon Valdez disaster, Exxon Mobil dragged out its legal battle with victims for decades.

Take Action

Attorney General Holder needs to know that we have his back as he takes on BP and its army of lawyers. Please take a moment right now to ask Attorney General Holder not to let BP off the hook.

Are you as outraged as I am? Then don’t stop there. Ask your friends and family to take action – copy and paste the link into an email or IM, or use the social media buttons on this page to “like” this post on Facebook and tweet it if you’re a Twitterer.

Tony Hayward testifies on Capitol Hill, June 2010 (via Flickr's EnergyCommerce)

Former BP CEO Tony Hayward reportedly has been hired, and I am not making this up, as the head of environment and safety at Glencore, a multinational mining and commodities trading company. Hayward’s next stop could be in Minnesota, reports MinnPost.com:

Tony Hayward has been recently hired by a company called Glencore. Don’t feel bad if you haven’t heard of it. It has been trying for years to be invisible to the naked eye. It was briefly in the news back in the Clinton years when its founder, Marc Rich, violated federal law by trading oil with Iran and went on the FBI’s most wanted list. Things cooled off fairly quickly because President Clinton pardoned Rich as Bill was on the way out of the White House door. Rich was, well, rich. He gave money to the Clinton campaign. I’m not saying. I’m just saying.

So Glencore ends up being one of the biggest, if not the biggest, commodities traders in the world. It handles everything from metals to fuel and has operations all over the globe. It doesn’t have a very nice record in some parts of the world where it has been accused of mistreatment of workers, pollution and very much worse. Now Glencore is putting its money in northern Minnesota. It is has just become the principal investor in a mining operation planned for Hoyt Lakes. [...]

Iron mining and northern Minnesota have gone hand in glove for a century. But the proposed PolyMet mine in Hoyt Lakes is a different animal. It is called hardrock sulfide mining. It will be going after copper and nickel and precious metals. It promises jobs in a job-starved part of our state. But there are two things you should know about hardrock sulfide mining. The first thing is that the Environmental Protection Agency says hardrock mining generates more toxic waste than any other sector of the U.S. economy. The second thing you should know is that the history of this sort of mining shows that when the metals run out, the companies decamp. The real pollution starts after they leave with the winnings, go broke, or sell out.

To recap quickly: Tony Hayward was at the helm of BP when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded and sank in a preventable disaster that spilled more than 200 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, a disaster that’s still being felt by the Gulf’s communities and wildlife. BP repeatedly misstated the size of the disaster and Hayward become a symbol of British Petroleum’s remarkable combination of arrogance and incompetence, first declaring he wanted the Gulf oil disaster over so he could have his cushy life back, then enjoying a day on a yacht while oil washed ashore in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Hayward was forced out as BP CEO, but the company kept him on and deployed him to Russia. When last heard from,  Hayward was cutting a deal to drill for oil in an Arctic wildlife haven.

Now Hayward is being put in charge of “environment and safety” in one of America’s most toxic industries? What could go wrong?

Via Kate Sheppard

The cap is a pretty simple concept: it limits the amount of money a driller has to pay in the event of an accident.   Right now the cap is set at $75 million, so a company like BP is only liable for $75 million in economic damages from their massive disaster.  They still have to pay cleanup costs and penalties for the oil they spilled, but aren’t legally bound to compensate folks like, say, the restaurant owner whose seafood supply was suddenly cut off, or the hotel staff who were laid off because tourists stayed home.

Oil spill make it so you can't buy fish for your restaurant? Too bad. (photo: Steve Linder)

Under heavy pressure from President Obama, BP set up a fund to cover some of these damages, but many Gulf residents have been turned away or forced to endure long waits.  And according to a report from the federal Oil Spill Commission, “If a company with less financial means had caused the spill, the company would likely have declared bankruptcy long before paying anything close to the damages caused.”

The obvious solution to this problem is to raise or eliminate the liability cap.  It’s a matter of accountability—if you knew you could wreck your rental car and only pay a $75 penalty, I bet you would go a little heavy on the gas pedal.

But BP is trying to make it about an altogether different issue: in a National Journal article yesterday (subscription required) Dudley was quoted as saying “The tough question is: How many companies do you want operating in the Gulf’s deep water? The higher the liability cap gets, the fewer companies that will operate in the Gulf.”

Well yeah, Bob…that’s true, but it’s not like deepwater drilling is exactly a mom-and-pop industry. We’re talking about some of the most expensive equipment in history—according to Michael Kearns of the National Ocean Industries Association, a deepwater rig can cost $600,000 a day to operate.  The little guys simply can’t afford to play the game in the first place.

BP's Dudley: "Don't chase off the little guys!" (photo: BP America)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but Congress is taking its sweet time bringing liability legislation up for a vote.  So long, in fact, that new deepwater permits are being issued without a new law in place.  When the bill eventually takes shape, it’s likely to create a two-part system with one cap for deepwater rigs and another, cheaper cap for shallow water rigs.  The idea there is that smaller companies already operate in shallow water and folks don’t want to chase them out of the Gulf.  Also, as we witnessed so painfully last summer, it’s a LOT harder to stop a spill five thousand feet below the ocean surface than it is in shallow water.  We need a bill that forces drillers to make safety, not speed, the priority.

Big Oil is fond of saying they have a good safety record (a slightly absurd claim, according to the numbers) but if that’s true, what do they have to fear about accountability?  The fact is these companies know they were incredibly lucky to avoid a major spill for so long, and they grew accustomed to easy profits while taxpayers carried all the risk.

Oh, and that new deepwater well that’s being drilled?  BP owns half of it.

Tony Hayward testifies on Capitol Hill, June 2010 (via Flickr's EnergyCommerce)

Former BP CEO Tony Hayward is back in the news – and once again, he’s putting critical wildlife habitat at risk.

Hayward was unceremoniously shipped to Siberia by BP last July. He’d had become a symbol of British Petroleum’s remarkable combination of arrogance & incompetence, declaring he wanted the Gulf oil disaster over so he could have his cushy life back, then enjoying a day on a yacht while oil washed ashore in Louisiana & Florida.

Now Tony’s back on his feet – and once again drilling for oil in sensitive wildlife areas:

Vladimir Putin used a Russian proverb to explain why he’s granting BP Plc access to 125,000 square kilometers (48,000 square miles) of Arctic water: the man who’s been beaten is worth two who haven’t.

The Russian prime minister is betting that BP has learned from the trauma of last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill and won’t repeat the same mistake. The Jan. 14 meeting with Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley in a ceremonial room at Putin’s country retreat sealed an agreement to swap BP shares for a holding in OAO Rosneft, Russia’s largest oil producer.

The summit ended negotiations that started when Dudley’s ill-fated predecessor Tony Hayward visited Russia to seek support as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill threatened to destroy the London-based company. Talks gained pace after Dudley took the helm at the start of October, and over hundreds of meetings the agreement that puts BP at the centre of Russian oil exploration took shape, people involved in the deal said.

Polar bear in Manitoba, Canada

The deal will allow BP to drill in the South Kara Sea, home to the Great Arctic State Nature Reserve, one of the largest nature reserves in the world. The Kara Sea large marine ecosystem (LME) supports a diversity of wildlife:

Bearded seals, walruses, and narwhals breed and rest on the coastal areas of the Kara Sea. The polar bears hunt for seals on the frozen edge of the sea. There is an abundance of fish such as Arctic cod, flatfish, and smelt.

That wildlife is already under attack:

The Kara Sea LME is impacted by a variety of anthropogenic contaminant sources. Oil and gas development and fisheries impacts pose severe threats to the region. Radioactive materials dumped into the Kara Sea LME may be severely impacting the ecosystem, resulting in the deaths of sea stars, shellfish, seals, porpoises and fishes. … The Siberian rivers discharging into the Kara Sea LME encompass industrial and agricultural regions within their watershed. In these industrial regions the air, water and soil are polluted by harmful substances. Obsolete technologies and the lack of facilities for processing industrial waste are major ecological problems.

Obsolete technology? Lack of facilities? Gee, doesn’t sound like they’d have any problems responding to a major oil disaster, does it?

But this story illustrates the shortcomings of America’s own response to the Gulf oil disaster – Congress hasn’t taken any steps to change our energy sources. Even if we tailor our drilling policies to drill in the most responsible manner & only where it can be done safely, if we don’t change our energy policies to curb our addiction to oil, we’re just shifting the risks to wildlife & precious places in other parts of the world.

Please take a moment right now to tell Congress we need to protect the Clean Air Act. It can help us protect polar bears & other wildlife both now & in the future – cutting our need to drill in the short term & reducing our global warming pollution in the long run.