US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday pledged to look into demands from a group of senators for an investigation into charges that BP lobbied for the release of the Lockerbie bomber as part of an oil-for-terrorist deal.
The oil company also yesterday faced the prospect of being shut out of the US after legislation that could ban it from offshore drilling projects for seven years cleared its first hurdle.
With pressure mounting on BP, Clinton responded to reports that it had lobbied the British government for the release of Abdel Basset al-Megrahi to help it clinch lucrative drilling contracts off Libya.
PHOTO: EPA
“I have received the letter and we will obviously look into it,” Clinton said.
Megrahi was convicted in connection with the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in 1988 in which 270 people died. He was released on compassionate grounds and repatriated to Libya in August last year after doctors said he was suffering from cancer and had likely only months to live. He is still alive.
“There was an expectation from last August that Mr Megrahi had only a few months to live. We’ve been on the Megrahi watch since that time,” US State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “Every day that he lives as a free man, we think is an affront to the families of and victims of Pan Am 103.”
News of a possible State Department investigation came as BP was forced to put back a pressure test of a new cap over its fractured well in the Gulf of Mexico. BP had hoped to begin sealing off the gusher with the new cap on Wednesday, but senior vice president Kent Wells said engineers needed to be certain the well pipe could stand up to additional pressure.
BP engineers were working yesterday to choke the flow of oil found a leak on a line attached to the side of the new cap on Wednesday before attempting to stop the flow of crude.
If the cap works, it will enable BP to stop the oil from gushing into the sea, either by holding all the oil inside the well machinery or, if the pressure is too great, channeling some through lines to as many as four collection ships.
In Washington, meanwhile, lawmakers were looking at measures that could severely restrict BP’s future operations in the US.
The House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources on Wednesday approved a proposal from Democrat Representative George Miller that would ban oil firms with a history of violating safety and environmental rules from new drilling projects.
“One of the things you should bring to this game is a safety record. You have a company that has had an egregious safety record, a fatal safety record,” Miller said.
On paper, firms that have five times as many violations as the industry average would be banned from bidding on contracts. In reality, however, it would only apply to BP, which has a long history of violations.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion