Disenfranchised Citizen

So then it's agreed? The dolphins are all committing suicide in protest of fewer deep sea oil platforms to swim around. Wonderful...Bob, you good with that? Great. Okay, bring the Coast Guard in here...

It just keeps getting funnier, except it’s not…

In this past week, it has been reported how, in the immediate aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, British Petroleum had demanded via e-mail that it’s own expert be kept quiet when he gave his opinion stating 82,000 barrels of  crude a day were coming from the Macondo Well. In fact, two days after ordering his silence, BP publicly announced their estimate that the flow rate was only 1,000 barrels per day. And of course, this report comes on the heels of another showing how the White House had been trying to get the United States Geologic Survey to downgrade its flow rate estimates in public statements too, reducing the USGS estimate of at least 25,000 barrels of oil per day coming from the well to a number the NIC thought sounded better, 12,000 to 25,000 barrels or better still, the estimate a White House Communications officer suggested, 12,000 – 19,000 barrels per day. Oh, and who can forget the wrongful termination lawsuit being filed by August Walters where he claims to have been fired by BP a couple of months back because he wouldn’t modify clean-up data  to make the beaches appear cleaner on paper than they in fact truly were, thus allowing BP to say they’d turned the corner and in light if this data, come to an agreement with the Coast Guard to officially move from cleanup to restoration, all while eagerly anticipating the stock bump to come from such an announcement.

Yes, these are the assholes in charge making things right along the Gulf Coast, and yes, the oil company mentioned in the above paragraph is the same British Petroleum putting out all those feel good commercials telling you how everything is just swell now. Hey! The economy, the seafood and the jobs are back!

And now, today even, when it comes to that same oil company and that same government, I’m sure if you asked, they’d go on and on to tell you how it would be impossible for the low-balling of flow-rate numbers that lead to a potentially flawed cleanup response based on their bad data, and how the fact there is still more unaccounted for oil in the Gulf of Mexico than was spilled from the Exxon Valdez…yeah, they’ll tell you how none of this has anything to do with more dead dolphins…even if there still is oil along the Louisiana coast.

Of course not.

That would be fucking ridiculous, and potentially unprofitable…

However:

“Since the beginning of the month, 14 marine mammals, including a dozen dolphins, have been found along the northern Gulf of Mexico. Half of the dead dolphins washed up on the Louisiana coast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) calls it an “Unusual Mortality Event” in the northern Gulf and next month will mark two years since it began. The tally so far: 630 dead.

The event started in February of 2010 – two months before the oil spill began. Still, the deaths raise a red flag with the Gulf Restoration Network. “The ongoing death of these dolphins speaks to the idea that we haven’t seen all of the impacts from the BP oil drilling disaster end yet,” said Dan Favre of the Gulf Restoration Network.

Ridiculous, indeed…

Read the article:

More dead dolphins wash up on Southeast Louisiana coast

Have a nice day.

August who? Nope...never heard of such an incompetent, lying son of a bitch...why do you ask?

When an employee of BP refuses to go along with the corporate narrative that all’s swell with Gulf cleanup, does BP change the narrative to make it more accurate? Does it admit there may be some problems, that they might not have done everything they promised to do?

No, instead they run some feel good commercials enforcing their narrative about Gulf health.

Oh…and that employee?

Fired.

So says a lawsuit for wrongful termination filed by August Walters, a former employee of BP’s Gulf Coast Restoration Organization (GCRO) as State Planning Lead “for the purpose of developing a descriptive plan to accomplish the cleaning of oil caused by the BP spill.”

From the article:

According to the suit, Walter’s job involved creating plans for the clean-up, known as Shoreline Treatment Recommendations (STR), which were prepared and approved with the oversight of the U.S. Coast Guard Federal On-Scene Coordinator (FOSC) “to be in compliance with federal and state environmental rules and regulations.” BP would then be responsible for implementing the plans. But, Walter claims, in May and June of 2011 he “began to convey his concerns that BP Mississippi operations were intentionally not following the plans for clean up delineated by U.S. Government, the Coast Guard and the Department of the Interior.”

“Cory Brown, BP’s Deputy Operations Branch Director/Response Lead conveyed that he was defying the [recommendations] by insisting that BP was only picking up tar balls and not other smaller oil debris as required by the” Shoreline Treatment Recommendations. In September of last year, Walter told BP that he was required to inform stakeholders that the company was not following his recommendations.

And, what allegedly followed next is what one might expect from British Petroleum…a campaign to discredit Walters within the company, the suggestion that the data should be skewed because to move from cleanup plans to restoration plans would be good for the company stock, and threats that he was being watched, so if he continued to do his job correctly, lawfully, he would be reported to his superiors.

On November 3rd, according to another article, Walters was called into a meeting with BP’s vice president of operations, Carla Fontenot who informed him BP’s primary objective was to gain the confidence of the Coast Guard so that cleanup could move to another phase even though BP was still in violation of the cleanup plan.

By November 8th when Walters still had not complied by skewing data, he was placed on leave.

On November 9th, he was fired.

Oh, and also on November 9th, BP and the Coast Guard announced that 90% of the oil had been cleaned up and BP said it was moving from cleanup to Gulf restoration.

And months later, articles continue to appear in various newspapers, questioning this change from cleanup to restoration when oil continues to wash ashore, hinder wetlands and lie in tar mats on the seafloor, just waiting for the next storm to bring it all up on the beaches again, especially when this change to restoration no longer holds British Petroleum accountable for long-term monitoring or continued cleanup of the beaches.

As Garret Graves, Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority Chairman, puts it:

“The whole discussion goes back to legacy response,” Graves said. “You have more oil unaccounted for right now than was spilled during the Exxon Valdez. Tell me what would happen if the Coast Guard in Alaska had said, ‘We’re not going to clean this up. Let it naturally degrade.’ ”

Read the articles:

Lawsuit Claims Former BP Employee Was Fired For Refusing To Skew Clean-Up Data

Fired Over Cleanup Data, BP Worker Says

Have a nice day.