U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study

[Seneca]

U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study



The Interior Department exempted BP's calamitous Gulf of Mexico drilling operation from a detailed environmental impact analysis last year, according to government documents, after three reviews of the area concluded that a massive oil spill was unlikely.

The decision by the department's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to give BP's lease at Deepwater Horizon a "categorical exclusion" from the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on April 6, 2009 — and BP's lobbying efforts just 11 days before the explosion to expand those exemptions — show that neither federal regulators nor the company anticipated an accident of the scale of the one unfolding in the gulf.

Now, environmentalists and some key senators are calling for a reassessment of safety requirements for offshore drilling.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36956650

[EFerrari]

1. "From each according to his gullibility to each according to his greed."

-- Chomsky

[malaise]

2. But but but

Rick the hair Perry says it was an act of Gawd!!

[Seneca]

4. The MMS has had corruption issues the past several years

I seem to recall there was a sex-for-oil (or gas?) type scandal in the Rocky Mountain region toward the end of the Bush years, which involved MMS employees.

This was a perfect collusion of corporate greed, arrogance and hubris, with government complacency and complicity.

[amborin]

3. and raked in billions:

BP: Billionaire Pollute


Posted on May 4, 2010
By Amy Goodman

Less than a week after British Petroleum’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and unleashing what could be the worst industrial environmental disaster in U.S. history, the company announced more than $6 billion in profits for the first quarter of 2010, more than doubling profits from the same period the year before. Oil industry analyst Antonia Juhasz notes: “BP is one of the most powerful corporations operating in the United States. Its 2009 revenues of $327 billion are enough to rank BP as the third-largest corporation in the country. It spends aggressively to influence U.S. policy and regulatory oversight.” The power and wealth that BP and other oil giants wield are almost without parallel in the world, and pose a threat to the lives of workers, to the environment and to our prospects for democracy.

snip

democracynow.org