Titans of Industry category archive

Buccaneer Petroleum wouldn’t make stuff up, now, would they?

Two watchdog groups sent a joint letter to BP America’s Ombudsman Program last week after obtaining a resource manual for the Deepwater Horizon disaster that detailed serious health risks from the chemical dispersants used to break up the oil slick — risks that the company denied publicly.

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports (print story here) on West Virginians who have learned how to make their own solar panels:

No doubt the local utility is thrilled. Also, pigs, wings.

A. On Southwestern Bell Cingular AT&T.

And the judge doesn’t think that’s right:

When AT&T started slowing down the data service for his iPhone, Matt Spaccarelli, an unemployed truck driver and student, took the country’s largest telecommunications company to small claims court. And won.

His award: $850.

Pro-tem Judge Russell Nadel found in favor of Spaccarelli in Ventura Superior Court in Simi Valley on Friday, saying it wasn’t fair for the company to purposely slow down his iPhone, when it had sold him an “unlimited data” plan.

AT&T says it will appeal so it can continue to limit unlimited.

. . . a coincidence.

Though it’s largely out of the news, Buccaneer Petroleum’s wild well continues to soil the lives of people, even as Buccaneer Petroleum ups its dividend:

Bloomberg itemizes the damage.

Via Delaware Liberal.

From Raw Story:

In exchange for keeping at least a 90 percent occupancy rate, the private prison company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has sent a letter to 48 states offering to manage their prisons for the low price of $250 million per year, according to a letter obtained by the Huffington Post.

There’s is something seriously morally bent here.

Stephanie Grace, writing at the New Orleans Times-Picayune, considers efforts by Buccaneer Petroleum to keep depositions from Tony Hayward, chief buccaneer at the time of BP’s wild well, out of court.

A snippet:

BP’s lawyers also complained that Hayward was asked about the company’s responsibility, which they say should be off limits because Hayward is not qualified to offer a legal opinion. The answers they want kept out of the record include responses to questions like these:

“Do you think that BP bore any responsibility, operation or otherwise, for the performance of this blowout preventer?” And “do you think BP had any responsibility, given its position that the BOP was the last line of defense, to follow up to ensure that any maintenance and repair that needed to be done, got done?”

While BP argues that responsibility is a legal term, the plaintiffs say it’s also a lay term that “everyone understands.” Hayward’s concept of his company’s responsibility, of course, is also central to how the events unfolded and who should be held at fault.

Apparently, the plain light of day is no friend of buccaneers.

Click to read the rest.

The Guardian reports that Apple “has come out fighting” in response to the increasing public awareness that its overpriced, over-hyped iGadgets are produced by an exploited, underpaid, off-shore labor force.

A snippet from the end of the article:

In a lengthy email sent to Apple staff, chief executive Tim Cook met the allegations head-on. “We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern,” Cook said. He went on to slam critics of the company. “Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us… accusations like these are contrary to our values.”

(snip)

However, the company’s own list made for grim reading. It revealed that a staggering 62% of the 229 facilities that it was involved with were not in compliance with Apple’s 60-hour maximum working week policy. Almost a third had problem with hazardous waste.

Certainly the “accusations . . . are contrary to” their values.

Accusations are contrary to my values to.

Especially when I’m guilty.

Not a lid on the spill, natch. A lid on the facts about it (emphasis added).

On the day the Deepwater Horizon sank, BP officials warned in an internal memo that if the well was not protected by the blow-out preventer at the drill site, crude oil could burst into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of 3.4 million gallons a day, an amount a million gallons higher than what the government later believed spilled daily from the site.

The email conversation, which BP agreed to release Friday as part of federal court proceedings, suggests BP managers recognized the potential of the disaster in its early hours, and company officials sought to make sure that the model-developed information wasn’t shared with outsiders.

“Outsiders” such as the U. S. Coast Guard, for example.

Buccaneer Petroleum loses a round in its attempt to weasel out of its contracts.

Oil giant BP has lost its attempt to shift over $15 billion of costs related to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill onto contractor Transocean, increasing the possibility BP may have to foot the entire $42 billion clean up bill.

A U.S. federal judge on Thursday said BP must uphold a clause in its contract with Transocean Ltd that would shield the Swiss-based driller from compensatory damage claims related to the 2010 disaster.

That means London-based BP may have to shoulder alone compensation claims brought by the likes of fishermen and hoteliers whose livelihoods were affected by largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

However, U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier left open the possibility that Transocean might still have to pay all or part of any punitive damages and civil penalties imposed by the U.S. government under the federal Clean Water Act.

I notice that BP is now a Swiss company. Guess they wanted a new hideout.

Parents and grandparents describe children’s health problems after Buccaneer Petroleum oiled the Gulf of Mexico:

Via Facing South.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has promised to deliver water to a northeastern Pennsylvania village where a natural gas driller has been accused of tainting homeowners’ wells with methane and possibly hazardous chemicals, residents said Friday.

Homeowners in Dimock Township have been without a reliable supply of clean water since Cabot Oil & Gas Corp., the Houston-based drilling firm blamed for polluting their aquifer, stopped making daily deliveries more than a month ago.

And, as Atrios points out, the frackers are walking away, leaving the evul fedrul guvmint to pick up the pieces.

Remember, it was the Bushies who exempted the fracking frackers from clean air and water regulations.

Perhaps some of you have seen Buccaneer Petroleum’s ad campaign portraying the Gulf Coast as cleaner than a computer manufacturer’s clean room. (I saw one and found it rather cloying.)

Facing South takes a look at the reality behind the flackery. A nugget:

(According to the ad campaign) (t)he oil is gone and the seafood is safe. End of story.

Except it isn’t.

(snip)

And every storm in the Gulf brings a fresh wave of tar balls and oily gunk onto the beaches and bayous. Where do you think that’s coming from? Experts say plenty of oil is still sunk on the bottom, some of it in thick tar mats lying just offshore. It’s not clear what will happen to it.

So this brings us back to BP’s ads. Just in case anyone is out there with a sympathetic ear, a producer or reporter looking for a different version of reality to explore, here are some people who won’t be part of BP’s latest promotional onslaught. These are all people I’ve blogged about over the past year, folks who hardly any local politician, tourism official, seafood distributor or oil industry exec wants to promote. But they are there if you want to find them. And they won’t be silenced.

Get the facts. Read the rest.

A series of earthquakes in northeastern Ohio, the latest and largest on New Year’s Eve, has prompted that state’s Department of Natural Resources to close or suspend development by natural gas drillers of five deep wastewater disposal wells pending an investigation into well impact on increased seismic activity in the area.

The latest earthquake, registering a magnitude of 4.0, was centered five miles northwest of Youngstown and very close to the 9,000-foot-deep Northstar No. 1 disposal well owned by D&L Energy, which receives most of its brine and fracking wastewater from Marcellus Shale drilling operations in Pennsylvania.

The fracking industry, of course, is claiming that it’s all for public safety, this was an isolated event, it wasn’t even home, it didn’t see anything, it was in a sports bar watching a football game or a parade or something and someone must have slipped it a roofy.

Balloon Juice.

I nominate the title as best blog post title ev-vuh.

Facing South reports on the frackers P. R. efforts. A nugget:

But just as opponents of fracking are making political gains, the gas industry is turning to harsh tactics for dealing with them — including the admitted use of counterinsurgency strategies and psychological operations borrowed from the U.S. military.

The disturbing revelations came during an oil industry conference held last month in Houston, in remarks recorded by attendee Sharon Wilson, director of the Oil and Gas Accountability Project at Earthworks.

(snip)

During a session titled “Understanding How Unconventional Oil and Gas Operators Are Developing a Comprehensive Media Relations Strategy to Engage Stakeholders and Educate the Public,” Matt Carmichael, manager of external affairs for Texas-based Anadarko Petroleum, said:

If you’re a P.R. representative in this industry in this room today, I recommend you do three things. … Download the U.S. Army/Marine Corps counterinsurgency manual. Because we are dealing with an insurgency. There’s a lot of good lessons in there, and coming from a military background I’ve found the insight in that extremely remarkable.

In other fracked up news,

The provision in a proposed Colorado rule for public disclosure of the ingredient of fracking fluids that allows oil and gas companies to unilaterally declare some chemicals “trade secrets” drew fire from the public at a hearing today.

“Disclosure isn’t for the industry, they know what they are using,” Gwen Lachelt, of Durango, told the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission. “Disclosure is for the public.”

What you don’t know can’t hurt them.

Walmart enhances its business model of moving jobs abroad and abusing employees, this time by cutting back on health benefits for employees:

In the video, one of the employees says of Walmart, “They don’t see us suffering.”

Like that would make a difference.

I am certain this tour will be as fair and balanced as a Fox News show:

A group of North Carolina lawmakers is in Pennsylvania today on a fact-finding mission about the controversial method of extracting natural gas known as fracking — and their tour guide is Chesapeake Energy, one of the nation’s biggest fracking companies.

From El Reg:

Microsoft has filed a patent for a system that monitors the behavior of employees via computers, phone calls, and physical gestures, and alerts human resources if anyone is behaving outside of preferred norms.

Having a “bad day at work” is henceforth verboten.