Glaring errors and omissions in BP’s oil spill response plans have exposed a slapdash effort to follow environmental rules, outraging Gulf Coast residents who can see on their beaches how unprepared the company was.
BP PLC’s 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company’s preparedness to deal with one, according to an Associated Press analysis. The lengthy plans were approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, whose state has been affected by the spill, was incensed on Wednesday after reading the AP story and said BP has been reactive — not proactive — all along.
“Look, it’s obvious to everybody in south Louisiana that they didn’t have a plan, they didn’t have an adequate plan to deal with this spill,” Jindal said. “They didn’t anticipate the BOP [blowout preventer] failure. They didn’t anticipate this much oil hitting our coast. From the very first days, they kept telling us, ‘Don’t worry, the oil’s not going to make it to your coast.’”
Among the glaring errors in the report: A professor is listed in last year’s BP response plan for a Gulf of Mexico oil spill as a national wildlife expert. He died in 2005.
The plan lists cold-water marine mammals including walruses, sea otters, sea lions and seals as “sensitive biological resources.” None of those animals live anywhere near the Gulf of Mexico.
Also, names and phone numbers of several Texas A&M University marine life specialists are wrong. So are the numbers for marine mammal stranding network offices in Louisiana and Florida, which are disconnected.
“The AP report paints a picture of a company that was making it up as it went along, while telling regulators it had the full capability to deal with a major spill,” Senator Bill Nelson wrote in an e-mail to the AP. “We know that wasn’t true.”
Nelson, whose home state of Florida has been affected, said he and Senator Barbara Boxer have asked for a criminal investigation into some of the company’s claims.
Earlier this month, the federal government announced criminal and civil investigations into the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. US Attorney General Eric Holder has not said who might be targeted in the probes into the largest oil spill in the history of the US.
Legal experts say that to file criminal charges, the Justice Department will have to find evidence that BP or other companies involved in the deadly oil rig explosion and subsequent spill orchestrated a coverup, destroyed key documents or lied to government agents. Charges and civil penalties can be brought under a variety of environmental protection laws.
In its Deepwater Horizon plan, the British oil giant stated: “BP Exploration and Production Inc has the capability to respond, to the maximum extent practicable, to a worst case discharge, or a substantial threat of such a discharge, resulting from the activities proposed in our Exploration Plan.”
In the spill scenarios detailed in the documents, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem.
And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.
Beaches where oil washed up within weeks of a spill were supposed to be safe from contamination because BP promised it could marshal more than enough boats to scoop up all the oil before any deepwater spill could reach shore — a claim that in retrospect seems absurd.
“The vessels in question maintain the necessary spill containment and recovery equipment to respond effectively,” one of the documents says.
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