Disenfranchised Citizen

In the latest from the MDL litigation, Transocean, the owner of the Deepwater Horizon, alleged that their contract with British Petroleum, the leaseholder of the Macondo Well, had indemnified them against any liabilities for pollution underneath the surface of the Gulf, and also against any civil penalties under the Clean Water Act or punitive damages from being declared grossly negligent. British Petroleum, of course asserted otherwise, as did the US Department of Justice.

Well, yesterday Judge Barbier issued his rulings. He decided the contract did indeed clear Transocean from those damage claims occurring below the surface of the water, it is British Petroleum who will be the responsible party for pollution damages from the 4.9 million barrels that leaked directly from the Macondo Well. Barbier also ruled the contract did not shield Transocean from any liability for punitive damages should their company be declared grossly negligent, nor did it indemnify them from any potential civil penalties under the Clean Water Act.  

Transocean, of course, declared this ruling a victory, “This confirms that BP is responsible for all economic damages caused by the oil that leaked from its Macondo well, and discredits BP’s ongoing attempts to evade both its contractual and financial obligations. Transocean is pleased to see its position affirmed, consistent with the law and the long-established model for allocating risks in the offshore oil and gas industry…”

This only makes sense.

You see, BP was trying to skirt their responsibilities under the law and Barbier set them straight.

British Petroleum also felt themselves to be quite victorious, “Today’s ruling makes clear that contractors will be held accountable for their actions under the law. While all official investigations have concluded that Transocean played a causal role in the accident, the contractor has long contended it is fully indemnified by BP for the liabilities resulting from the oil spill. The Court rejected this view…”

This too only makes sense.

You see, Transocean was trying to skirt their responsibilities under the the law and Barbier set them straight.

And with spin factories so readily engaged, victory toasts were had all around.

Executives clapped lawyers on backs and lawyers hit speed dials to their favorite banking institutions to check account balances.

And with all these companies claiming all these victories over all these decisions, when the dust settled and the cheering finally dissipated into idle conversations about Super Bowls and stock options, it was almost kind of easy to forget that when it comes to this catastraphuk that unleashed 4.9 million barrels of oil after an explosion that killed eleven people, just how there really were no victories to be had here…

When it comes to the worst environmental disaster to hit the United States, British Petroleum had a hand in it, and so did Transocean, and for that matter so did Anardarko and Halliburton…and no matter how Barbier ruled yesterday, not one person from any of these companies has yet to spend a day in jail.

So yeah…Transocean claims victory. British Petroleum claims victory. Transocean calls British Petroleum liable and vice versa, yet eleven people are still dead while thousands of others still wait to be made whole, and all cheering aside, that’s something someone should be liable for…criminally.

Read the article:

Judge says Transocean will be shielded from paying pollution claims

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.

Nov 7th? No...no, I meant December 30th...my bad.

Two days ago, Carl Barbier, the federal judge overseeing the Deepwater Horizon litigation decided that a gang of lawyers, so named the plaintiff steering committee, should benefit from a reimbursement fund, designed to pay them for the money they’re spending to sue BP on behalf of their clients. One of the many problems with this decision is this fund will not be paid for by British Petroleum, the originators of this whole oil spill catastraphuk, but from a 6% deduction from people who’ve settled, including claimants who went through Ken Feinberg’s GCCF, including claimants who didn’t even use the fucking lawyers.

Barbier reasoned the work of the plaintiff’s attorneys had been to the benefit of all claimants involved in the second catatraphuk to hit the Gulf, the aforementioned GCCF.

Barbier then wrote these deductions should be taken from all GCCF claims paid on or before November 7th…otherwise known as two months ago.

In response, Feinberg promptly suspended all GCCF payments until he got an explanation of just how the hell he was supposed to accomplish deductions from payments paid almost two months ago.

Judge Barbier was reportedly then informed that November 7th occurred the aforementioned two months ago, to which he promptly cursed his aides, turned red and hid in the bathroom until coaxed out by those same, aforementioned aides.

At this point, he then spoke to Feinberg on the phone and said he was just kidding about the aforementioned date of November 7th and what he meant to say was that 6% should be deducted from all claims paid on or after December 30th.

Feinberg then reportedly laughed aloud, and thanked Barbier profusely for stepping up and making such an ass out of himself, thus taking some of the heat off the “neutral” arbitrator and his client, British Petroleum.

And then Feinberg resumed payments from the GCCF…paltry as they may be.

So there you have it.

This update has been brought to you by Disgusted Inc.

Read the article:

GCCF resumes payments for BP catastrophe losses

Oh…and if you haven’t read this great article on the whole Barbier ruling and all the politics behind it…do yourself a favor and check out Slabbed for all the background on the lawyers and politicans influencing Barbier’s decision…’tis required reading:

Competing Conflicts of Interest cause Gulf Coast Claims Facility to suspend payments: A periodic report from the gutter where its all going down.

Have a nice day.

Kneel before Zod, bitches!

Can’t you just imagine BP’s control room after the oil gushing into the Gulf  hit mainstream news worldwide?

Bunch of sweaty suits and PR flacks sitting around, not concerned about the truth per se, but more about how to spin what couldn’t be denied, that the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf Coast were about to be really screwed, and for a long time… Oil companies had already become the bane of everyone’s existence as their profits skyrocketed even higher than gas prices. British Petroleum’s safety record was full of fuck-ups, their previous mishaps had killed their employees before and now, they had unleashed the mother of all fuck-ups and killed eleven more people.

Good lord was it ever public relations time! PR departments were invented for these kinds of situations.

No, British Petroleum would not admit this was their fault, but they would work with the Obama administration to come up with a $20 billion dollar compensation fund and they’d go all over the news to talk about making things right, about making the Gulf whole again…about doing whatever it could, as an ethical company to make sure this never happened again and also to mitigate the damages as much as technologically and humanly possible.

And they put their efforts all over the television, the radio, the internet.

Course, as we approach the two-year anniversary and all the mainstream new outlets are gone, as the American public has stopped paying attention…as public relations become increasingly unnecessary, British Petroleum has decided the oil spill was never their fault at all, and they want their money back, every last fucking dime from the real culprit…

Halliburton.

No, British Petroleum never meant to be the penitent company they played while the cameras were bright. That was just a show, a sham, a staged media event and now that nobody’s paying attention, now that fewer mainstream journalists are around to call them a bunch of fucking weasels…

British Petroleum is blaming everybody else.

And they’re suing Halliburton for the entire cost of cleanup – $42 billion dollars – and hey, even if the suit doesn’t work, maybe it’ll help them avoid a declaration of gross negligence, which would vastly increase their oil spill fine…

Disingenuous assholes.

Yes sir, British Petroleum is again engaging in the egotistical, do no wrong kind of behavior that makes an increasing percentage of Americans hate said oil companies or maybe a better way of putting it would be that as the media’s cameras turn off for good, BP is again free to be BP…an irresponsible, ethically challenged, profit before worker and environmental safety oil company who’ll try to do whatever it can to walk away from their clusterfuck of almost two years ago at the expense of…whomever.

Course, that’s just my opinion…

Read the article:

BP sues Halliburton over $42 billion oil spill bill

Have a nice day.

Yeah Santa...Bob lives in that house right over there and then two blocks west, you'll find Ken...

Hey everybody…

Yeah, I’m still around, preparing to launch back into things on the 1st of the year, but I couldn’t let the days get by without some holiday wishes to all in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast…

Best to everybody this season…Christmas, New Years and everything else everybody celebrates…

Me, I’ll be driving even further north than I already am to spend time with family and on Monday night, take over the television to watch the Saints destroy the Falcons in the Dome!

Merry Christmas!

Go Saints!

And of course, screw British Petroleum…I’d wish the Claus’d put coal in every one of your stockings but you’d just turn around and try to sell it anyway…

- Drake

So...disappointed...

Okay, not really…

But you were thinking it, weren’t you?

In case you don’t know what this is about, British Petroleum has accused Halliburton of intentionally destroying test results showing samples of the cement they used to seal the Macondo Well were unstable, in addition to the suppression of computer models that might have also showed them at fault.

In truth, Halliburton said they are reviewing the filing…

And that’s about all the truth you’re going to get, especially from companies like British Petroleum who, lest we forget, fought to keep the press out of the Gulf, has made it next to impossible for independent scientists to get the oil samples they need to do testing in the Gulf, as well as buy up scientists throughout the Gulf region.

Now, British Petroleum would maintain the latter was done so the cleanup wasn’t affected, that they are just following procedures and were trying to find the best and the brightest to help them with the expertise needed to make the cleanup a complete and rousing success…except of course, for the obvious, which is no pictures, no evidence, no way a scientist can testify against us now that you’re entire science department signed the confidentiality clause…

Yeah, BP’s full of it, duh…but nonetheless it leaves me to scratch my head and say, when it comes to accusing Halliburton of concealing or destroying evidence in the Gulf:

Jealousy will get you nowhere.

Read the articles:

Halliburton Unit Destroyed Evidence in Gulf Oil-Spill Case, BP Tells Court

BP says Halliburton destroyed Gulf spill evidence

Have a nice day.

So when British Petroleum says...

Okay…so riddle me this Batman:

In August, fresh oil slicks are discovered near the Macondo well site. BP denies they are there. The Coast Guard denies they are there. Bonnie Shumaker, pilot for Wings of Care flies out and takes pictures, proving the oil is there. BP then admits the oil is there as does the Coast Guard, after confirming BP admitted it too, but both say the oil is not from the Macondo reservoir. Then reporters from the Alabama Press Register take a boat out to the slicks, take samples, have it tested and sure enough, it is from the Macondo reservoir.

Hmm…

BP responds to this by sending an ROV down to look at the well-head. They don’t release the video, but they assure everyone still paying attention the well-head isn’t leaking, nope…not at all…it must be residual oil being released from the collapsed pipes and equipment on the seafloor. In response, Transocean sends an ROV down to check the collapsed pipes and equipment and says…nope, no oil leaking from there.

Hmm…

And this month, BP denies they are still checking into this oil. Then a pilot flies over, and confirms several large oil-related vessels operating at the surface above the Macondo well. BP says…oh, those ships, and yes, they then confirm they are conducting a study to track the oil from seabed to surface.

Track what from where?

In an emailed statement late Friday, a representative from BP verified that several vessels are in the vicinity of the Macondo well: “There are several vessels there participating in a study of natural oil seeps. This study has been ongoing for the past month or so. Data continues being collected and we provided an update on the natural oil seeps at the SETAC [Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry] conference in Boston this week. … The study is documenting the specific locations of these seeps and is seeking to track oil flow from seabed to surface,” BP wrote.

Natural oil seeps?

To which Stuart Smith, a New Orleans attorney replies:

If there are seeps in the area, they are not natural. I can assure you of that. BP was required to conduct a seafloor survey prior to applying for a permit to drill. If these seeps were not discovered during the survey – which they apparently weren’t – they must be related to the disaster and the heavy-handed methods used to attempt to seal the well.

To which BP quickly responds:

When we used the word “natural,” we meant it in the way that plastic surgery is meant to “naturally” erase the effects of aging, a bit of botox, a brow-lift, a cheekbone implant, a face-lift, a slight ear raise, and then the smallest of nose jobs…and voila! The seafloor is naturally leaking oil, natural as a smile from Jack Nicholson’s Joker…

Or in other words…

Robin: “Natural” is to nature, like animals are in nature and animals have fat…and this fat can be used to make soap and when we use soap, we typically are trying to remove dirt from our skin and what is skin but a part of the human body which is composed of 70% water, water like what’s found in the Gulf of Mexico…and all that Gulf water is above the seafloor…the seafloor! So what does it mean, Batman?”

Batman: “Obviously Boy Wonder, it means we need to have done what Stuart Smith suggests…a full survey of the seafloor around the Macondo Well so we will finally know what the hell is going on down there…”

Drake: “Seriously, how many times does BP get to creatively tell the truth?”

Read the article:

Breakthrough in the Macondo Mystery: BP Admits to New Activity at Deepwater Horizon Site

Have a nice day.

Nope, nothing at all, because we told you so...

Last summer, when the Macondo Well was still flowing, the US government allowed British Petroleum to keep the press out of the immediate, oil impacted areas. A number of reasons were given at the time…encroachment on private property, safety of cleanup workers, or keeping press boats from running over boom meant to contain the oil.

These reasons were all bullshit, of course.

Hell, at first they even tried to deny they were attempting a media blackout, but what it all comes down to is a private company, with government ascent was allowed to restrict the rights of the press, thus negating much information and imagery that we, as American citizens have a right to read and witness, to be informed about.

And this media blackout is not an anomaly, it is part of a larger overall pattern, evidenced again by the eviction from Zucotti Park of the Occupy Wall Street protestors. When the NYPD entered the park, they also attempted to keep the media out, keep them from documenting the raid:

At a news conference after the park was cleared Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg defended the police behavior, saying that the media was kept away “to prevent a situation from getting worse and to protect members of the press.”

Some members of the media said they were shoved by the police. As the police approached the park they did not distinguish between protesters and members of the press, said Lindsey Christ, a reporter for NY1, a local cable news channel. “Those 20 minutes were some of the scariest of my life,” she said. Ms. Christ said that police officers took a New York Post reporter standing near her and “threw him in a choke-hold.”

Journalists were arrested, pepper-sprayed and beaten by the police, to keep them safe, protected, out of harms way…again, bullshit. It was an obvious attempt to hide what the police were doing, and how they were doing it. Much like British Petroleum tried to keep images of the oil spill from the mainstream press, or limit them however they could to better enable BP to construct the narrative, Mayor Bloomberg and the NYPD do a similar thing, keeping images from the press knowing full well that more images of the NYPD beating down or pepper spraying protestors would provoke greater sympathy and hamstring their ability to say whatever they like about how the events occurred.

Facts and law are not important…in fact, laws are mere guidelines, something for lawyers to argue about later…

Laws are something for the people to follow, not for those who see themselves in charge…

Press freedom and the rights entailed therein are handed down, controlled from on high – not from the courts, but by larger business interests, politicians and their police departments…

Yes, the great wealth divide in this country is not just about money and who has it, it’s also about who must follow the rule of law, who gets to be heard and by whom and who gets to be on the blunt end of the ongoing militarization of this country’s police departments.

From British Petroleum to Michael Bloomberg to one more police beat down of Berkeley college students…at what point do the laws of this country protect us and our freedoms, instead of protecting those who move so quickly to take these freedoms away in order to protect themselves?

Have a nice day.

Sick kids? Yeah...I know, like Christmas and oil spills all wrapped together...

It’s official.

“Making things right,” has been declared dead.

The priest has been to the hospital, performed last rites and was then thrown through the glass doors and spit upon by current British Petroleum CEO Bob Dudley, who whipped around, his black duster flapping lazily in the fall breeze, before he strode back into the hospital. Word is he was heading towards the pediatric ward to see if he could dash the hopes of any sick children, pull out their IV’s, blow his nose on their lunch trays.

And in the process, BP’s entire public relations department had a panic attack…

Why? What happened? How has this come to be?

Well, British Petroleum is trying to screw over participants of the VoO program still, while shrugging their shoulders at non-payment of workers and businesses who lost money as a result of the drilling moratorium. Oh, and didn’t you know they’ve signed an agreement with their trusty sidekick, the Coast Guard to agree the clean-up is for all intent and purposes over and when it comes to the trial beginning in February, those two big ‘ol reports the government did? They want those reports excluded from the trial, as well as any other litigation brought against BP in the past…

Making things right, for British Petroleum…but for the Gulf Coast?

Suck it.

When it comes to the VoO Program, 500 more fishermen have alleged in court they signed a contract with BP which states they would be paid a daily wage regardless of whether their boats are used until the contract is complete, which only occurs upon final decontamination of their boats. Turns out however, BP really scrimped on the decontamination supplies so many fishermen are still waiting for this, with unusable, oily boats. And of course, British Petroleum doesn’t want to actually pay these fishermen for waiting around for BP to complete their terms of the contract, so they actually sent out a new “transitional” contract, hoping some people would actually sign it and, you guessed it, the decontamination language is gone. Oh, and they sent this contract out in large part to Vietnamese fishermen who can’t read English.

Huh, fraud much?

So, on to that agreement with the Coast Guard; it’s a government plan to end most of BP’s responsibility for pretty much any more clean-up of any more oil that might contaminate beaches in the future. Not entirely, however…BP can still be on the hook for further cleaning, but first it must be proven the oil washing up is actually from the Macondo Well, which conveniently enough the company concedes, will be ever harder to prove as the oil continues to degrade. Also in this agreement, it is not specified who, if anybody, will be involved in long-term monitoring of the Gulf, regardless the lessons learned from continued problems with the major spills in Mexico and Alaska, problems which are continuing twenty years later. It should be noted Louisiana officials refused to approve of this Coast Guard plan, but BP and the Coast Guard had a novel solution for this potential problem…they have decided to just ignore Louisiana so therefore, no more problem.

Next, we come to that drilling moratorium. Bob and British Petroleum feel this moratorium is not their fault so they should not be responsible for any loss of income people or businesses may have suffered over those five months. You see, this was a solid case of arbitrariness at its best…that Obama character just loves to shut down drilling for no apparent reason. In fact, word is next week he’s going to pull the plug on every nuclear plant in the country, shutting them all down for six weeks because, well…because he’s the president and he can. Seriously though, of course the worst environmental disaster in the history of the United States had nothing to do with that moratorium. That kind of cause and effect is more crap logic from business hating Democrats so this is why Bob feels BP should be totally off the hook on this one. To prove it, he plans to find the nearest bar where he will not only explain this in greater detail, but he’ll also show any fellow patron how natural gas fracking has nothing to do with earthquakes in Oklahoma…all while he does whiskey shot after shot until he’s sober.

Finally this week, BP has decided this whole trial thing in February just ain’t right, as is. British Petroleum went to a lot of trouble to buy so many scientists and science departments in Universities across the Gulf Coast, and thus being bought, unable to testify against them at trial. So it kind of flies in the face of that to have those two huge investigations by unbought government scientists and the resulting reports used against them at trial. Fair’s fair, right right? Hell, the Coast Guard report even said British Petroleum was ultimately responsible for the whole deal. This would be why they have asked for said reports to be excluded, oh and also excluded should be any other litigation brought against BP in the past, especially from places like Texas City and Prudhoe Bay. Bob would appear to feel this is certainly understandable as the last thing BP needs is their long record of mishaps be used to show a long pattern of mishaps.

Hey, details!

And the BP public relations department has officially passed out.

Really, who could blame them? They’ve been forced to eat this whole “Making things right” slogan for well over a year and it’s hard, really hard when your company CEO appears only concerned with making things right for the company shareholders, focused for the most part on the legal technicality and what he is legally obligated to do, instead of just sucking it up and doing the right thing, period.

I mean, hey, don’t get me wrong…the $20 billion escrow fund was a good thing in spirit…but Feinberg’s handling of it is a whole nother story and it almost seems at times this escrow fund’s main goal was to provide PR cover for BP to try and screw everybody and everything else they possibly could.

It’s kind of like the mediocre student whose content to just pass the course, rather than excel…yeah, Bob’s getting a D-.

So, to the Gulf Coast?

It would appear more and more, that unless you got the law, you are now officially on your own…not that you haven’t (really) been this way for a long enough time already…let’s just say BP finally ripped their mask clean off as it would appear they’ve decided moral bankruptcy and greed is back in style…

Have a nice day.

You could be forgiven for thinking that large object in the background is a crystal chandelier, but you'd be wrong...that's actually a specially built clear glass container where Bob keeps his ego. Yes I know, don't worry, the brand new, much larger container will be installed next Friday.

Bob Dudley announced Monday that British Petroleum had come to terms with Anadarko, which has agreed to give up its 25% stake in the Macondo Well and pay British Petroleum $4 billion dollars as its share of damage claims and cleanup costs.

“I am very pleased that they stepped in and are now shouldering some of the responsibilities,” BP Chief Executive Bob Dudley said. He went on to add the agreement was not an admission of liability from either party, but the settlement is “favorable for both companies.”

Well, of course nobody is liable, of course, but favorable to both Anadarko and British Petroleum…how might that be?

Well, simply put, British Petroleum has estimated total costs in cleanup and damages will eventually reach $42 billion dollars. Anadarko could have potentially been on the line for 25% of that due to its 25% ownership of the well. However, if Anadarko had been able to prove in its lawsuit that British Petroleum was grossly negligent, then they would have been financially off the hook altogether. So, essentially Anadarko chose to cut their losses, with BP agreeing to the company paying only 10% of projected damages and cleanup costs, while Anadarko also gives up its pursuit of proving BP was grossly negligent in the spill.

And in case one needs reminding, a proven designation of gross negligence would raise BP’s fine by $18 billion dollars, because the fine per barrel under such a designation would increase from $1,100 per barrel to $4,300 dollars.

And that’s getting expensive, really expensive, so though Bob was glad to see Anadarko “shouldering some of the responsibilities,” what BP really wanted was for the company to stop pursuing this designation, same as they want to settle with Transocean and Halliburton more than likely under the same terms, possibly saving British Petroleum billions… billions that would go towards the restoration of the Gulf Coast, billions that would certainly constitute BP fulfilling their sense of responsibility, and potentially coming closer to finally making the coast whole again.

So yeah, when Bob Dudley says on Monday, “There is clear progress with parties stepping forward to meet their obligations and help fund the economic and environmental restoration of the Gulf, it’s time for the contractors, including Transocean and Halliburton, to do the same,” that’s pretty damned annoying to hear from the CEO of British Petroleum, and pretty self-serving too.

I get that as a profit-making company, Bob and BP are beholden to their shareholders. I also understand it only makes sense in our current system for a profit-making company to try real hard to not pay out damages, regardless of who or how many it hurts, while at the same time, giving the impression they are doing all they can to make things right.

Okay, understood.

But Bob? Mr. Dudley?

To those of us who pay close attention to this story, we do see what is going on here. Your company complains Ken Feinberg is paying too much to claimants. Your company bought off scientists from universities all over the Gulf Coast in hopes of furthering your advantage in upcoming court proceedings. Your company killed eleven people in this catastraphuk alone. Your company is making it very difficult for researchers to get their hands on necessary oil samples so they can find ways to restore the coast your company fucked up. Your company stands accused of harassing plaintiffs who have filed lawsuits against it.

And yes, your company is fighting the designation of gross negligence while at the same time urging other companies to own up to their obligations and responsibilities.

In other words, Bob, you’re full of shit.

Your company is grossly negligent. There is little to dispute about that, but what, unfortunately, is very much in dispute is whether you sons of bitches are going to be able to buy your way out of it.

Read the article:

BP gets $4bn from Anadarko as part of a Gulf settlement

Have a nice day.