“I was out there yesterday and stepped all in it,” said Gulf Shores tourist John Henson this summer to the AP reporter Jay Reeves. Over three years after the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico oil spill, tar balls still plague the soles of sandy feet. British Petroleum (BP), the company most responsible, is anxious to wash its own feet of the publicity, environmental and social fiasco.
According to the Huffington Post, after spending $14 billion on cleanup, the BP-funded crews have stopped clean-up work throughout the Gulf Coast, sans South Louisiana. The company has spent an estimated comprehensive total of $42 billion on spill related costs. To put that number in context, $42 billion is almost half of Mississippi’s yearly GDP. The relevant questions are: will the company be able to abdicate further responsibility for the damages? Has BP paid its dues?
In a room with no microphones, BP would probably scream that it has paid more than enough for the company’s damage. After all, the company has provided a steady supply of American oil for decades. Does the past count for nothing?
Now, BP’s attorneys are disputing the proper payout for a multi-billion dollar settlement in Louisiana. Apparently, the courts are responding to the pressure. In October, the 5th Circuit panel rejected U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier’s previous agreement with the company’s disaster compensation package.
Just last month in a rare admission, BP executive James Dupree affirmed that the company’s lack of emergency preparedness worsened the spill’s damage. The company used a capping stack to stop the spill 87 days after the explosion. The capping option was not the first strategy employed. Blaming the initial spill-stopping engineering failures is less beneficial than to realize the reason for the delay. BP had not built a device for capping potential spills.
The company must have realized the risk of equipment failure. Standard practice is to consider all devices deployed in open salt water as destructible. The lack of foresight to have a capping device ready to deploy should be punished. Businesses seek to cut cost by storing less spare infrastructure, accepting risk and moving maintenance repairs to the next quarter. Like a student skipping a class, the companies have a right to reduce cost. Yet with that license, companies have responsibility to remediate the consequences of their negligence. The frustrating aspect of Dupree’s admission is that constructing a capping stack could have been done cheaply prior to the spill.
BP is not afraid to go directly after the U.S. government. According to the Houston Chronicle, this August the company convicted of manslaughter sued the government to contest the EPA sanctions. BP has been a major oil supplier to the military. Now the sanctions cost the company an estimated $1.9 billion in foregone military contract revenue.
The company keeps dodging two non-monetary numbers. The explosion also cost 11 lives and bled more than 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf’s azure waters.
The Huffington Post reports that BP has claimed to encounter widespread fraud in the settlement payments. Two attorneys in Mobile were sited for dishonest claims. Judge Barbier has stated that accusations of rampant fraud are baseless.
BP has also challenged the math. The company contends that 34 million gallons emptied into the Gulf were “recovered” and thus should not count against them. In the drawn-out legal process, the company has much greater leeway than the workers on the platform or the fauna on the beaches did during that summer. The lesson is to expect BP to press any advantage it sees.
The company continues to pursue a woe-is-me rhetoric. Do not feel sorry for the corporation. A BP representative said the payments are “historic resolutions that avoid years of lengthy litigation.” Likely, the speaker intended to emphasize the company’s rapid benevolence towards the affected. In reality, quicker settlements help the company’s public perception and future earnings.
BP plays a PR game. The company has spent over $100 million for positive advertising since the spill. After a reluctant concession, BP now happily touts the $105 million payment to Gulf Coast health programs, as if it were an inspired country club golf tournament charity donation. Still, a Huffington Post poll determined that 43 percent of Americans harbor a negative view towards the company.
One area where haste is strenuously avoided by BP is the courtroom. Like opponents to school integration, the company has employed a delay, delay, delay strategy. Federal courts have often complied. For example, the trial of David Rainey, a BP vice president, has been delayed five months to March 10, 2014. The reason given was to allow Rainey more time to construct his defense against the obstruction of justice charges.
The strategy makes sense. The courts have occasionally questioned company representatives harshly. Michael Kunzelman reported that BP executive Mark Bly was challenged for the firm’s insistence that only rig worker mistakes caused the spill. Transocean attorney Brad Brian asked a hard question: “Did you think it was relevant to your investigation whether the people on the shore were making decisions that increased risk in order to save money?” Bly retorted that the internal investigation was “more driven by the accident.” By focusing on the mistakes of the true victims, the rig workers, the company defers blame and abdicates responsibility.
One senses that BP would rather write a humongous check than have the narrative of the spill change from “accident” to “disaster caused by blatant cost-saving negligence.” The squabble over the technicalities of the 2010 spill will continue. Do not expect the spill to cause structural change. BP is fiercely resilient. In the meantime, expect more petroleum ads to be shown before your next YouTube video.
Neal McMillin is a senior southern studies major from Madison.
-Neal McMillin
tnmcmill@go.olemiss.edu
