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BP’s First Global Advertising Campaign Since Deepwater Horizon Accused of Being ‘Deceptive and Hypocritical’

January 31, 2019

BP’s First Global Advertising Campaign Since Deepwater Horizon Accused of Being ‘Deceptive and Hypocritical’ 

Baby featured in a BP ad

Nearly a decade after being held responsible for the largest marine oil spill in history, BP’s first global advertising campaign in ten years has been denounced as “deceptive and hypocritical”.

The global advertising campaign called “we see possibilities everywhere” aims to showcase BP’s efforts to embrace clean energy and includes a series of short videos profiling the British oil giant’s plan to increase its energy production while lowering its emissions.

BP did not respond to DeSmog UK’s request for comment on time for publication but it previously said the campaign would allow the company to communicate its low-carbon activities in an “exciting” way. But critics say that with clean energy amounting to only around three percent of the company’s total capital expenditure programme, the campaign is little more than a blatant “greenwashing” effort.

It is the first time BP has taken part in a major corporate revamp of its image since the ‘Beyond Petroleum’ campaign and follows months of record profits for the company, which benefited from stronger oil prices and higher production from new oil fields.

‘Possibilities everywhere’

Speaking in Davos, BP’s CEO Bob Dudley admitted that the last decade has been “very difficult” for the company, which had to manage significant reputational damage of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“I don’t think we had the credibility to talk about things in an exciting way,” he told CNBC.

“I think it’s time for us to tell our story a little bit differently, let people know we are engaged in this big energy transition and we have a big core business.”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Trump To Rollback Deepwater Horizon Regulations

December 27, 2017

Trump To Rollback Deepwater Horizon Regulations

Trump

The Trump administration is hoping to slash regulations on offshore oil drilling that were implemented after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed nearly a dozen people and led to an oil leak that spewed for months.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), which is the agency housed in the Interior Department that regulates offshore oil drilling, is proposing a rollback of a series of changes made after the 2010 disaster.

BSEE says that the cuts will save the oil industry $900 million over ten years. The proposal has not been made public, but the WSJ reports that some of the changes include easing rules that require the streaming of real-time data of oil production operations to facilities onshore, which allows regulators to see what is going on. Another rule that would be removed requires third-party inspectors of equipment, such as the blowout preventer, to receive certification by BSEE.

Another example includes alterations to the “well-control rule,” one of the signature regulations that was implemented by the Obama administration after years of review following BP’s oil spill. The well-control rule required the use of certain safety equipment and operations intended to reduce the risk of another disaster.

But the Trump administration, in a nod to the oil industry, has proposed deleting the word “safe” from a section of the rule, the WSJ reports, which would restrict BSEE’s ability to withhold permits. “Based on BSEE experience during the implementation of the original [well control rule], BSEE has concluded that the term ‘safe’ creates ambiguity in that it could be read to suggest that additional unspecified standards, beyond those expressly stated, may be imposed in the approval of proposed drilling margins,” BSEE wrote in a justification of the rule change, according to the WSJ.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

October 16, 2016

Deepwater Horizon and our emerging ‘normal’ catastrophes

While watching the recently released film “Deepwater Horizon” about the catastrophic well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that caused the largest oil spill in U.S. history, I remembered the term “fail-dangerous,” a term I first encountered in correspondence with a risk consultant for the oil and gas industry.

We’ve all heard the term “fail-safe” before. Fail-safe systems are designed to shut down benignly in case of failure. Fail-dangerous systems include airliners which don’t merely halt in place benignly when their engines fail, but crash on the ground in a ball of fire.

For fail-dangerous systems, we believe that failure is either unlikely or that the redundancy that we’ve build into the system will be sufficient to avert failure or at least minimize damage. Hence, the large amount of money spent on airline safety. This all seems very rational.

But in a highly complex technical society made up of highly complex subsystems such as the Deepwater Horizon offshore rig, we should not be so sanguine about our ability to judge risk. On the day the offshore rig blew up, executives from both oil giant BP and Transocean (which owned and operated the rig on behalf of BP) were aboard to celebrate seven years without a lost time incident, an exemplary record. They assumed that this record was the product of vigilance rather than luck.

And, contrary to what the film portrays, the Deepwater Horizon disaster was years in the making as BP and Transocean created a culture that normalized behaviors and decision-making which brought about not an unavoidable tragedy, but rather what is now termed a “normal accident”–a product of normal decisions by people who were following accepted procedures and routines.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

April 20, 2016

Six Years After Deepwater Horizon: Time For Serious Action

BP oil disaster by Julie Dermansky

The cleanup crews abandoned the Gulf Coast years ago, claiming that the damage from the spill was “gone” and the media quit paying attention shortly after the wellhead was capped at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.

Despite the lack of attention paid to the Gulf region in recent years, the lasting damage of the oil spill is something that remains fresh on the minds of everyone that calls this area home.

Like most disasters that don’t involve national security issues, Americans tend to operate under the belief that once the media attention has faded the issue is resolved. They don’t understand that the victims of the spill who lost their source of income are still fighting court battles against BP, Transocean, and Halliburton.

They haven’t heard about the sea life with abnormal growths and heart defects linked to the lingering oil and dispersants that have settled on the bottom of the Gulf. And they are unaware that tar mats and tar balls are still common sights on beaches throughout the region.

Here’s a quick primer on what the Gulf Coast has gone through in the last six years for those who haven’t been paying close attention:

First, we have the real extent of the damage caused by the oil. Photojournalist and DeSmogBlog contributor Julie Dermansky captured images throughout the oil spill and cleanup process, and here are a few that really show, in detail, how bad things were along the shore:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why U.S. East Coast Should Stay Off-Limits to Oil Drilling

March 1, 2015

Why U.S. East Coast Should Stay Off-Limits to Oil Drilling

It’s not just the potential for a catastrophic spill that makes President Obama’s proposal to open Atlantic Ocean waters to oil exploration such a bad idea. What’s worse is the cumulative impact on coastal ecosystems that an active oil industry would bring.

by carl safina

When it comes to the Obama administration’s recent move to open portions of the Atlantic coast to oil exploration, I’m a bit out of synch with environmentalists who are worried about the big spill. They warn of another Deepwater Horizon or Exxon Valdez-type fiasco coming to the Southeast. But to me, it’s just about the day-to-day business of chasing oil, the wrong-headedness of it all.

It’s not that I don’t have some personal history with the major oil calamities of recent decades; I do. In my early teens the first televised images of oil-coated birds during the 1969 blowout off Santa Barbara shocked me and the nation, inspiring the first Earth Day and propelling a 

burst of environmental laws. Twenty years later, at home working on a scientific paper, I heard the radio’s news of the Exxon Valdez’rupture and of thousands of oiled birds and otters, and began sobbing at my desk. A decade later, I visited Cordova, Alaska, and saw how the pain and disruption from the spill had seeped into lives of the people there as thoroughly as the oil had seeped into shoreline sediments and the livers of waterfowl. And in 2010, I spent a lot of time along, on, and above the Gulf of Mexico while oil freely gushed from the hole that BP had made in our coastal soul. There was the failure of the ‘blowout preventer’ to prevent the blowout, the crazy “junk shot” attempt to jam golf balls and shredded tires down a gushing well against the force of the upward-shooting oil, the ghastly photo of the nearly unrecognizable brown pelican jacketed in crude as it died. My chronicle of that summer of anguish became the book A Sea in Flames.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Oil from 2010 BP spill found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

February 4, 2015

Oil from 2010 BP spill found at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico

A new study suggests that up to 38 million liters of crude oil from the 2010 BP oil spill is resting on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico, posing a threat to the local ecosystem.

The findings have shed light on where ‘missing’ oil from the spill ended up — a quandary that puzzled U.S. government and BP officials during massive cleanup efforts in April, 2010.

Of the nearly 5 million barrels of oil spilled into the ocean, around 2 million remained unaccounted for, years after the disaster.

Florida researchers took 62 sediment samples from a 24,000 square kilometre space around the site of the BP oil spill and discovered that about 8,400 square km are covered with oil from spill.

“This is going to affect the Gulf for years to come,” Jeff Chanton, the study’s lead researcher and a professor of chemical oceanography at Florida State University, said in a statement.

“Fish will likely ingest contaminants because worms ingest the sediment, and fish eat the worms. It’s a conduit for contamination into the food web.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

BP makes $1bn loss as oil prices slump

February 3, 2015

BP makes $1bn loss as oil prices slump

Company faces losses, share-price fall and more fines over Deeepwater Horizon spill with underlying profits likely to take a hit

BP has crashed to a $1bn loss in the final quarter of the year as low oil prices and more writedowns hammered its results.

Its chief executive, Bob Dudley, warned the industry had now entered a “challenging new phase” of reduced crude prices clearly signalling he expected no quick bounce back for the value of Brent.

The $969m (£645m) replacement cost loss in the final three months of the year compared with a profit of $1.5bn for the same period last year. The underlying replacement cost loss – a “clean” figure preferred by analysts – came in at $2.2bn, compared to $2.8bn last time.

Shares in BP fell over 2% in early trading despite the company raising the dividend for investors to 10c.

The troubled oil company, which has in the past been a subject of takeover speculation, said it would be slashing its spending for 2015 to $20bn, down from a target of over $24bn in 2014.

BP also revealed it had so far spent $43.5bn on fines and other liabilities resulting from the Gulf of Mexico blowout. The company admits it could still face charges of $13.7bn under a Clean Water Act but is hopeful it can avoid this.

“We have now entered a new and challenging phase of low oil prices through the near and medium term,” said Bob Dudley, BP group chief executive.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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