British Petroleum released their new Sustainability Report where they went to great lengths to discuss the lessons they learned last summer, and how BP’s Bob Dudley is now all about responsibility. Bob feels it is up to them to “earn back the trust” of all involved and dad-gummit, they’re gonna do it!

In their report, they discuss how BP:

“From the beginning…worked to fight the spill and minimize its impact on the environment,” and how, “These efforts helped to reduce the amount of oil that reached the shore and environmentally sensitive marsh areas.”

Nice.

Course, what’s missing from the report is any mention of how much oil was released, or any real assessment of how much damage was actually done to the environment or the people who reside on the Gulf Coast.

Umm, not so nice.

Yes, British Petroleum details all the spills they’ve suffered, the volume of oil unleashed, worker fatalities and injuries between the years 2006-2010, all except the oil spilled when the Deepwater Horizon exploded. Those quantities are missing, simply because British Petroleum feels it’s best not to admit to any numbers “due to (their) reluctance to report data that has such a high degree of uncertainty.”

Uncertainty…yes, from The Lookout:

“In the past year, scores of scientists from across the world have poured over data and reviewed video footage of the flow of oil spewing from BP’s busted well on the floor of the Gulf. And by consulting such sources, researchers have offered their own estimates of how much oil entered the Gulf at BP’s behest. What’s more, a vast range of experts who’d been following the spill closely agreed that the U.S. government’s final estimate that BP had released roughly 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf seemed reasonably accurate. BP officials, of course, cried foul and challenged the numbers, just as they did from the first day of the spill onward—they insisted on their own preferred figure of 5,000 barrels per day, which of course made the damage of the spill, and the corporate liability arising from it, seem minimal. Such low-end estimates were conceived, in the words of Fast Company, to “greenwash” the scale of the spill’s impact.”

And perhaps all that uncertainty might explain why Tony Hayward will receive, upon stockholder approval at their April 14th meeting, a stock bonus worth 8 million pounds. You see, he actually did a heckuva job, increased profits, and to beleive the sustainability report, did not preside over the worst oil spill in United States history, leaving his job in disgrace. Word is, however, stockholders aren’t buying it, they’ve seen the press and they know, they know something happened in the Gulf of Mexico, course that was such a long time ago and nobody really reports about it anymore…but still, something happened, right? Stockholders are being urged to vote down the bonus.

But, back to the sustainability report, so why might British Petroleum drop the volume of oil spilled from their report?

Same reason British Petroleum does anything, anything at all.

Money.

From a footnote in the report:

“Although there are several third-party estimates of the flow rate of total volume of oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon incident, we believe that no accurate determination can be made or reported until further information is collected and the analysis, such as the condition of the blowout preventer is completed.”

In other words…BP is unwilling to confirm any of said estimates because they are disputing the numbers, which more than likely has a lot to do with a certain $1100 per barrel fine BP will have to pay under the Clean Water Act. 

And since, as mentioned, such estimates are so unreliable, better to just leave it out of their Sustainability Report altogether. How’s that for Dudley’s responsibility, for endearing trust with “actions, not words.”

Really, not so nice…

My guess is Tony Hayward hopes BP continues to fight on, deny, deny, deny…after all, not only the company, but Tony himself has got a lot of money riding on BP’s newest version of “responsibility.”

Have a nice day.