Titans of Industry category archive

This could only have been an attempt to muddy the waters (or oily the waters), then escape before the mud cleared.

Transocean Ltd. (RIG) can’t sue the U.S. government for partial fault in the 2010 blowout of BP Plc (BP/)’s Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico and subsequent oil spill, a judge said.

“The U.S. has sovereign immunity here,” U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier said today at a hearing in New Orleans in dismissing a claim brought by Transocean in a lawsuit. The company can still present evidence of such allegations at trial in an effort to limit any damages against it, Barbier said.

It’s like Willy Sutton suing the banks.

How is this not kidnapping and extortion?

Airlines have already begun charging for food, drinks, seat assignments and baggage. Now one is demanding that passengers cough up extra cash on board for fuel.

Hundreds of passengers traveling from India to Britain were stranded for six hours in Vienna when their Comtel airline flight stopped for fuel on Tuesday. The charter service asked them to kick in more than 20,000 pounds ($31,000) to fund the rest of the flight to Birmingham, England.

It’s always a “remote chance,” right up until it becomes “who could have predicted?”

Last week, the Mobile Press-Register reported that federal officials excluded the BP oil blowout from their economic risk calculations for future oil drilling operations in the Gulf. According to an economic analysis, BOEMRE, the federal agency responsible for drilling safety and oversight, focused on an earlier period of drilling in the Gulf, striking “a rough balance between the remote chance of another (Deepwater Horizon) event and the otherwise much safer performance” before the BP spill, the newspaper reported.

Click for the rest.

Fracked veterans describe their experiences:

Two Pennsylvania farmers who leased land to shale gas drillers in their state and dreamed of a big payoff painted a bleak picture of the gas industry Thursday.

Carolyn Knapp and Carol French warned that if North Carolina permits drillers to explore here, residents can expect conflicts with neighbors, lawsuits with gas companies, health complaints, a spike in crime and ruined property values.

Good corporate citizens all.

The companies involved in the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history are trying to prevent government investigations blaming them for the disaster from being used against them by the people and businesses who are suing them.

(snip)

BP, Transocean and cement contractor Halliburton filed motions late Monday in federal court in New Orleans seeking to keep certain government oil spill reports out of the civil case. BP also wants a judge to bar plaintiffs’ lawyers from using past criminal, civil and regulatory proceedings against the British firm in the civil case.

This should be interesting:

The (South Fayette, Pennsylvania–ed.) township has filed for an injunction against its own zoning hearing board, saying a majority of the board members and their families have financial ties that warrant a forced recusal in hearing a challenge by energy company Range Resources to the township’s drilling regulations.

The legal appeal could shake up decision-making across the commonwealth, where the combination of small towns and a big industry make the occurrence of officials holding leases nearly inevitable. Now, in South Fayette’s case, taxpayers are paying solicitor fees on both sides.

Can you imagine an American energy company admitting responsibility for anything?

A controversial method of extracting gas from the ground known as fracking was the “highly probable” trigger of earth tremors along England’s coastline this year, according to findings published Wednesday.

British energy firm Cuadrilla Resources said a study of its drilling along Lancashire’s Fylde coast, northwest England, concluded “it is highly probable” that the fracking “did trigger a number of minor seismic events.”

The Denver Post examines the effects of cutting back on federal food inspectors and replacing them with private “auditors.”

Many of the most notorious food-illness outbreaks in recent years were preceded by glowing private safety audits of the producers, prompting calls for oversight of auditors and forcing grocery chains to tighten screening of cantaloupes and other food.

An inspector hired by Jensen Farms gave the cantaloupe operation a “superior” safety rating the same month contaminated melons were sorted by an unsanitary potato machine and sent to stores. Probing the subsequent listeria outbreak that has killed 28, Food and Drug Administration inspectors found multiple problems, and experts say an auditor should have flagged the issues.

It was only the latest incident when a “third-party” audit — slammed as an inherent conflict of interest by safety experts — failed to note deadly mistakes in a food operation.

Read the whole thing.

You will want to start a garden and raise your own livestock.

“Job creators” my anatomy.

Whirlpool Corp. (WHR), the world’s largest maker of household appliances, said it will cut more than 5,000 jobs and reduce capacity by six million units after lowering its earnings targets as consumers rein in spending.

Axel Caballero on Cuentame’s Immigrants for Sale campaign, and the politicians and corporations that profit from detention centers.

Verizon sells your soul:

Verizon has posted changes to its privacy policy stating that it will now share user location data, Web browsing history and demographic information with marketers.

While Verizon insists that it will not provide third parties with any information identifying users on a personal basis, it will give them a wide array of its users’ information, including websites they frequent on their Verizon devices, places where their devices have been, and demographic categories such as gender and age range. Verizon will also share user interests with marketers, such as whether they’re a sports fan, own a pet or what sort of restaurants they frequent.

If you think that someone who has your age, sex, and where you go and when you go there can’t figure out who you are and where your children attend school in a matter of minutes, you need to think again.

If you are unlucky enough to use Verizon, follow the link above for information on how to opt out of this.

Via GNC.

Three years after residents first noticed something wrong with their drinking-water wells, tanker trucks still rumble daily through this rural northeastern Pennsylvania village where methane gas courses through the aquifer and homeowners can light their water on fire.

One of the trucks stops at Ron and Jean Carter’s home and refills a 550-gallon plastic “water buffalo” container that supplies the couple with water for bathing, cleaning clothes and washing dishes. A loud hissing noise emanates from the vent stack that was connected to the Carters’ water well to prevent an explosion Ñ an indication, they say, the well is still laced with dangerous levels of methane.

Recent testing confirms that gas continues to lurk in Dimock’s aquifer.

Pennsylvania has started monitoring their gas Galtian overlords more closely, despite the best efforts of their wingnut governor, because the public demands it.

The industry continues to claim it saw nothing, it was not there, it did not even get up that morning.

The post mortem report is in:

The report, released Wednesday, said in the days leading up to the disaster, BP made a series of decisions that complicated cementing operations, added risk, and may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the cement job.

Other companies also shared some of the blame, according to the report, which noted that rig owner Transocean, as owner of the Deepwater Horizon, was responsible for conducting safe operations and for protecting personnel onboard.

No surprise. As seems quite common amongst our well-heeled betters, greed trumps judgment and safety.

Counterfeiting entire walled orchard fruit stands, er, Apple Stores, in China.

There is no truth to the rumor that I’m starting that they were inspired by Wall Street Banks, who posed as legitimate businesses with solid products while selling bags of air securitized mortgages and credit default swaps.

The 27-year-old blogger, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the set-up of the stores was so convincing that the employees themselves seemed to believe they worked for Apple.

“It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue T-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks,” she wrote on her blog.

The scale of the operation does inspire a sort of grudging admiration.

More at the link.

Asia Times reports on the sharing of the wealth:

United States oil company ConocoPhillips China (COPC) and state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) may face compensation demands for damage caused by oil spills off China’s northeast coast far higher than the 200,000 yuan (US$31,000) penalty announced last week, China’s top ocean watchdog and legal experts said.

COPC and CNOOC, the country’s biggest offshore oil producer by capacity, last week apologized for the oil leaks – one month after their operations 50 kilometers off the northern coast of Shandong province started to pollute 840 square kilometers of Bohai Bay.

Buccaneer Petroleum, Orwellian twits.

The meltdown at Fukushima has faded from the front page, but it’s not fading at all. Here’s a bit from Asia Times:

Yet American officials were also caught unprepared. Most continue to deny outright that the radioactive pollution will have a palpable effect on the United States. Recent reports, however, indicate that infant mortality rates in eight major cities in the northwestern United States, where the fallout was greatest, jumped 35% in the four weeks following the accident. This is consistent with the biological effects of radiation. [4]

Previous reports have indicated the presence of radioactive particles in rainwater as far east as Massachusetts, and in milk and other products throughout the country. The American authorities, as indeed most authorities in the world, appear to be in denial. Many important reports continue to be classified, and there is a sense that governments are lying to their people for lack of a better response.

In all likelihood, the scope of the disaster continues to evade us. There is little doubt that “the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind” will force us to learn painful lessons, and that we are only just beginning to grapple with its meaning.

This, of course, is clearly not an important story.

The circular firing squad locks and loads:

Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon rig that leaked millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, has largely blamed BP for the disaster.

(snip)

Transocean’s report comes two months after a study by the US Coast Guard said Transocean contributed to the disaster because of the company’s lax safety culture, and poorly maintained equipment on the Deepwater Horizon.

BP also says Transocean was partly to blame and is suing the Swiss company – the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor – for $40bn (£25bn).

Transocean also counters in its report that BP used a poor well design, which it says led to the failure of the cement around the well casing.

This is like squabbling over who’s more culpable: the perp who loaded the gun, the one who bought the ammo, or the one who pulled the trigger.

More here.