BP/Halliburton Deadly Pollution Record (Only the Most Recent)

* In 2005, an explosion at BP's Texas City refinery (third-largest in the country) and fires ripped through the giant site, killing 15 workers, injuring 180 others, as 43,000 people fled for their lives into indoor shelters. The investigation determined the blast was caused by failure at all levels of the BP Corporation including, significantly, repeated cost-cutting safety and maintenance violations. A criminal investigation by the Bush-Cheney Justice Department resulted in a $50 million fine against the company for violating the Clean Air Act. One EPA administrator said the fine was but a slap on the wrist, a laughingstock for a company with profits in excess of $17 billion in 2007. The Justice Department slammed the door on EPA continuing a criminal probe of BP.

* In 2006 BP was at it again, drawing criminal investigations from the EPA and Justice Department for two massive corroded oil pipe leaks into the Alaskan tundra of 200,000 gallons of oil. BP's contemptuous compliance with the Alaska U.S. Attorneys office request for a surgical release of documents was to scan 62 million pages. EPA Special Agent in Charge Scott West remembers thinking, Holy shit, I cant breathe. If he and his woefully understaffed three or four people printed out all of the pages it would have filled a warehouse.

* In 2009 an oil rig exploded into a fireball off the coast of Australia, dumping thousands of barrels of oil into the pristine fishing waters of the region over a ten-week period. The cause, as suspected in the Gulf oil disaster, was a faulty cementing job by Halliburton. The World Wildlife Fund called the spill one of Australia's worst environmental disasters, ruining 80% of the catch for some fishermen.

The Halliburton-Cheney Connection: Cheney's Katrina

Where is Dick Cheney? One of the more curious aspects of this environmental catastrophe is the absence of Big Oilman Dick Cheney from the public eye. In the first days of the crisis, Cheneys surrogates fanned out in a full-court media press to spread disinformation and propaganda, even trying to deflect blame onto President Obama by calling it Obama's Katrina. This charge is so patently absurd and irresponsible that it fell of its own weight when the media, for once, did a good job debunking it. Cheneys fingerprints are all over the misinformation campaign, but he remains out of sight, hunkered down in an undisclosed location.

Cheney has cause to lay low. His filthy fingers may be all over the rights propaganda campaign, but the truth of Cheneys responsibility and potential criminal liability is far more sinister.

The explosions in both the BP Australian and Gulf oil rig (operated by BP subcontractor Deepwater Horizon) increasingly point to Halliburton as the main culprit for faulty cementing. The process is meant to prevent oil and natural gas from escaping by filling gaps between the outside of the well pipe and the inside of the hole bored into the ocean floor. The wife of one of the rig workers killed in the explosion has filed a lawsuit in federal court claiming Halliburton is culpable: The company prior to the explosion, was engaged in cementing operations of the well and well cap and, upon information and belief, improperly and negligently performed these duties, which was a cause of the explosion.

Halliburton confirmed it had finished cementing 20 hours prior to the Gulf rig explosion, just as it had finished cementing the Australian rig when it blew on August 21, 2009. As the Australian government inquiry into what is called the Monera spill continues, a Halliburton cementer with 20 years on the job testified: have you been taught in, training or otherwise become aware that problems with cementing are the number one cause of blowouts?: No, I wasnt aware of that. From 1996 to 2006, 18 of the 39 offshore blow-outs have been caused by bad cementing, according to the U.S. industry regulator, the Minerals Management Service (MMS), an agency of the Interior Department.

Why is this significant?

Halliburtons alleged criminal negligence was aided and abetted by former CEO Dick Cheneys even more valuable service to the energy industry as a powerful poison pill government insider gutting the very regulatory agencies (Interior-MMS) responsible for public interest oversight and regulation of these transnational corporations. Cheney bagged $44 million during his five-year tenure with Halliburton before becoming Vice President. As Vice President Cheney remained on the companys payroll. After all, he is a valued corporate asset, having ensured that Halliburtons entrails reach into every nook and cranny of Iraq-Afghanistan war profiteering.

Deregulation by the Numbers: An Avoidable Catastrophe

Burn this into memory, deregulators and global warming deniers and laissez-faire capitalist ideologues and limited government libertarians: Based on the facts, proper industry safety standards, oversight, and regulatory protocols would have prevented the catastrophe inexorably poisoning the Gulf. The craven history of Cheneys secret meetings with energy industry tycoons -- to divvy up the deregulatory spoils, line his pockets with present and future IOUs, and gut the Interior Department and its industry enforcement arm, MMS, staffing them with cronies and (literally) industry whores -- leads directly to the Gulf oil disaster.

* In 2000 MMS requested industry advice on problems related to the cementing used around deep sea well caps to stop blowouts. The oil industry never produced recommendations, and no regulation was put in place. When the Bush-Cheney oil regime took office, they put the brakes on comprehensive safety regulation by MMS, which considered a safety redundant device, called an acoustic trigger essential and proposed to mandate them on all Gulf oil rigs.

Acoustic triggers, are mandated for major offshore rig operators off the coast of Brazil and in Norways North Sea operations. BP has voluntarily installed this safeguard in its North Sea rigs. All the worls major companies use the device. It is a remotely triggered shutoff switch that activates when the manual switch fails. This device, which costs $500,000 was not installed in the BP Deepwater Horizon rig. It could have prevented the BP Gulf oil disaster.

* The number of drill site inspections carried out by the MMS fell by 41 percent between 2005 and 2009, even as the number of drill rigs operating in U.S. waters increased. The number of penalties issued by MMS for regulatory violations fell from 66 in 2000 to 20 last year.

* Illustrating BP's awesome political clout, In June of 2009, the MMS, now under Interior Secretary Ken Salazar (whose appointment was criticized by environmentalists for being too cozy with the oil industry) exempted BP from producing a legally mandated environmental impact study for the site where Deepwater Horizon would drill. Obama was earlier warned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that MMS studies approving offshore drilling were not reliable.

Chocolate Milk

To hear the industry shills describe it, the oil spill poisoning the Gulf waters as it makes landfall is as benign, warm and cuddly as chocolate milk Rep. Gene Taylor, one more Mississippi Democrat in the pocket of the oil and gas industry, said: A lot of people are scared and I dont think they should be because What I want people to know is, this isnt Katrina, this is not Armageddon. The farther you get from the spill, that chocolate milk looking spill starts breaking up into smaller pieces.

Deepwater Horizon Info

"We do not have real-time off-rig monitoring of what's going on on the vessel," Newman replied.

Part of Halliburton's contract on the Deepwater Horizon was to provide real-time data to officials on shore. That company was able to produce a chart showing events up to two minutes before the explosion. But that document would not be expected to show the key test results.

The chart indicated that shortly before 10 p.m., pressure in the standpipe increased sevenfold to 3,500 pounds per square inch. Halliburton had essentially two minutes' notice that something had gone horribly wrong.

Halliburton monitors temperatures and pressure in offshore wells through sensitive sensors and instruments often capable of transmitting data in real time to officials on the rig and on shore, said Jack Madeley, a consulting safety engineer in College Station, Texas.

"Operators like BP use that information to make sure the well is in the right location," said Madeley, who specializes in forensic investigations of rig accidents. "They need that to make sure the overall procedures for getting it cemented and getting the well secured before they pull the string out and plug up the well are done."

The data help BP and other well operators make crucial decisions about the formations where they are drilling, but it is not always streamed to shore minute by minute, he said.