BP's oil catastrophe is now back IN FULL MUTHAFUCKIN EFFIZZECT

Alright! We have now finally returned to blowing out several million gallons of crude oil a day!

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen says an underwater robot bumped into the venting system. That sent gas rising through vent that carries warm water down to prevent ice-like crystals from forming in the cap.

Allen says the cap has been removed and crews are checking to see if crystals have formed before putting it back on. In the meantime, a different system is still burning oil on the surface.

Before the problem with the containment cap, it had collected about 700,000 gallons of oil in the previous 24 hours. Another 438,000 gallons was burned.

The current worst-case estimate of what's spewing into the Gulf is about 2.5 million gallons a day.

I knew BP could make good things happen.

New official estimates for oil hemorrhage are 60 times what they were

Yes, now the federal government says that BP's hole in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico is blowing out up to 2.52 million (2,520,000) gallons of oil per day. That is now sixty thousand (60,000) barrels, compared to the initial figure of one thousand (1,000) barrels.

BP is well on its way to claiming the world's largest oil catastrophe (with the exception of the daily annihilation that is human industrial existence), already easily claiming number three, and perhaps number two.

Way to go. People are awesome.

A fervent love based on a deep fear

Seems some people in Britain are unhappy with Americans' public views of BP. Aww.

“When you consider the huge exposure of British pension funds to BP, it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the airwaves,” Mr. [Boris] Johnson [the Conservative mayor of London] told BBC radio’s Today program.

Prime Minister David Cameron refused to criticize the United States, however, saying he sympathized with its “frustration” in dealing with its worst environmental disaster in memory. But the chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, signaled careful support for BP, saying that he had spoken to its chief executive, Tony Hayward, and that it was important to remember “the economic value BP brings to people in Britain and America.”

BP is the third largest oil company in the world, after ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell, with 80,000 employees worldwide as of last December, sales of $239 billion in 2009 and a market value — even after the recent losses — of more than $100 billion. At a time when Britain is desperate to reduce its deficit, BP is a huge contributor to British tax revenue, paying nearly $1.4 billion in taxes on its profits last year.

Its reputation for reliability and its generous dividends have long made it a favorite of British pension funds. The company’s dividend payments accounted for about 13 percent of the dividends handed out by British companies last year, according to FairPensions, a London-based charity.

The message - BP can do whatever it wants, just don't do anything in response that might hurt anyone else financially. It's like having a crackhouse in your neighborhood and everyone agreeing that is indeed thoroughly a detriment, but hey, don't get rid of it, cause it keeps up foot traffic for the corner store.

This reminds me of people saying how you shouldn't boycott BP stations because the ballyhooed small businessman will get hurt, not BP. That's unfortunate, but the reality of the situation is that when you deal with the devil, you should expect some negative consequences. It's that same mentality - coercing people to still buy from BP.

Here's some "vicious" criticism from some bank fuck:

Iain Armstrong, an analyst at Brewin Dolphin, an investment manager here [in the UK], said that the situation had become “overpoliticized” and had confused the markets about BP’s actual strength.

“It’s gotten completely out of hand,” he said. “Ironically, by being extremely strong financially, BP has become a target.”

Well, no, it's more that they have a big pipe on the ocean floor that is shitting oil and gas into the water at the rate of well over one million gallons per day since April 20th (4/20 bro). It is now June 12th. Long time, yeah? And you see, even though it is a big body of water, like CEO Tony Hayward has said, it's a whole lot of oil. It really is. And the problem with all that is that oil and water still don't mix. I don't know why, I guess oil is stubborn, or maybe water is racist. Then you wind up killing lots of birds, dolphins, fish (I wish Phish as well) and many smaller organisms (though not walruses, seals or sea lions) that are essential for the ocean to function as a source of life, not to mention all those jobs you wipe out. You could put those people to work cleaning up your big mess, but you generally don't, you give those jobs to rich people instead. To conclude, Iain Armstrong has no fucking point. At all.

Finally, we see the most ostentatious and offensive manifestation of this attitude, casting BP as the victim:

Writing on his Web site, a Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, called the American response “a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance against a multinational company.”

Yes, Americans are crude, bigoted, xenophobic and partisan, not to mention racist, homophobic, sexist, rude, hostile, selfish and destructive, but they are mostly not political. Poor multinational company with $100 billion value with a $17 billion profit last year. Stop kicking it around, America! It's from another country, so you have to accept it, no matter what! Otherwise you are an asshole! You can't criticize!! Fuck, this sounds like Zionism. Financial Zionism. Capitalist Zionism.

On the use of oil dispersants

From the EPA's site on the BP disaster:

Are any human health effects expected as a result of using the dispersants?
People working with dispersants are strongly advised to use a half face filter mask or an air-supplied breathing apparatus to protect their noses, throats, and lungs, and they should wear nitrile or PVC gloves, coveralls, boots, and chemical splash goggles to keep dispersants off skin and out of their eyes. CDC provides more information on reducing occupational exposures while working with dispersants during the Gulf Oil Spill Response.

Ha. Tragically funny, given BP's insistence that there is no danger to people working with dispersants, to the extent that they are not permitted to wear masks.

The EPA freely admits that BP is using, and being allowed to use, this shit underwater with no advanced knowledge of what will happen:

What effects could the use of dispersants have on marine life?
It’s important to understand that the use of dispersants is an environmental trade-off. We know dispersants are generally less toxic than the oils they breakdown. We know that surface use of dispersants decreases the environmental risks to shorelines and organisms at the surface and when used this way, dispersants breakdown over several days. However the long term effects on aquatic life are unknown, which is why EPA and the Coast Guard are requiring BP to implement a robust sampling and monitoring plan.

Perhaps more accurate is the idea that they are saying that they don't know what the long-term effects are, when in reality a bunch of marine biologists and assorted scientists have pretty good ideas of what will happen. However, they are able to get by with saying that "the long term effects on aquatic life are unknown," because it is true, in a technical sense, since no one has ever applied dispersants like this before.

Here you can see them telling you that things are gonna be real bad, but what are you gonna do?

How will we know the future and total effects on marine life of dispersant use?
It is too early in the process to know what the scope of the natural resource damage will be. Look to federal partners such as NOAA and DOI for information on impacts to fish, shellfish, marine mammals, turtles, birds and other sensitive resources as well as their habitats, including wetlands, beaches, mudflats, bottom sediments, corals and the water column.

Apart from marine life, has the Unified Command been able to make an assessment on the effects of the dispersant on the environment?
The harm or toxicity of dispersed oil in the environment is generally associated with the oil rather than with the dispersant alone. However, use of dispersants breaks up a slick of oil on the surface into smaller droplets that can go beneath the surface. When applied on the surface before spills reach the coastline, dispersants will potentially decrease exposure for surface-dwelling organisms (such as sea birds) and intertidal species (such as mangroves and salt marshes), while increasing exposure to a smaller population of aquatic life found deeper in the water. It is unknown if dispersed oil has toxic implications to the human population because bioaccumulation through the food chain has not been evaluated.

All that stuff about "not been evaluated" and "too early in the process to know" is coded language for "we're fucked but don't want to tell you."

Finally, the agency states very clearly that there are plumes of oil beneath the surface and tells the reader exactly why:

How do dispersants work on the water's surface?
Oil spill dispersants are chemicals applied directly to the spilled oil in order to break it into small droplets that fall below the surface. Dispersants are usually applied to the oil slick with specialized equipment mounted on an airplane, helicopter or ship. Once applied, dispersants help break up oil into tiny micron-sized droplets which mix into the upper layer of the ocean. Dispersed oil forms a "plume" or "cloud" of oil droplets just below the water surface. The dispersed oil mixes vertically and horizontally into the water column and is rapidly diluted. Bacteria and other microscopic organisms are then able to act more quickly than they otherwise would to degrade the oil within the droplets.

These few paragraphs are a great read, as they directly contradict so much of what BP has been saying and show them to be the liars that they are.

Video to prove that there are oil plumes under water

and that they are killing everything. And that the wild usage of dispersants is wrecking the water in new ways. Here's an accompanying story:

I make my way to the back of the boat unaware of just how covered I am. To be honest, I look a little like one of those poor pelicans we've all been seeing for days now. The oil is so thick and sticky, almost like a cake batter. It does not wipe off. You have to scrape it off, in layers until you finally get close to the skin. Then you pour on some Dawn dishwashing soap and scrub. I think to myself: No fish, no bird, no turtle would ever be able to clean this off of themselves. If any animal, any were to end up in this same puddle there is almost no way they could escape.

The cleaning process goes on for half an hour before the captain will even think about letting me back in the boat. I'm clean, so I stand up. But the bottoms of my feet still had oil, and I fall back in the water. The process starts again. Another 30 minutes of cleaning and finally I'm ready to step into the boat.

BP says they aren't there.

In a shocking development, BP is still lying about how much oil is shooting out of their hole in ocean floor

BP refuses to provide any estimate aside from that old 210,000 gallons a day bullshit scenario that the government put forth way back when. Why? They say something to the effect of "it does not matter how much oil is coming out. All that matters is that we stop it." Actually, it matters quite a bit how much oil is coming out, and not just for the obvious environmental holocaust reason. They get fined on every barrel (42 gallons) of oil that comes out of that hole, and will likely be charged royalties on each barrel as well. Of course they are not going to help dig that part of their grave:

Some scientists involved in the Flow Rate Technical Group say that they would like to produce a better estimate, but that they are frustrated by what they view as stonewalling on BP’s part, including tardiness in producing high-resolution video that could be subjected to computer analysis, as well as the company’s reluctance to permit a direct measurement of the flow rate. They said the installation of the new device and the rising flow of oil to the surface had only reinforced their conviction that they did not have enough information.

“It’s apparent that BP is playing games with us, presumably under the advice of their legal team,” Dr. Leifer said. “It’s six weeks that it’s been dumping into the gulf, and still no measurements..."

The company, which for several weeks had publicly rejected the idea of using subsea equipment to measure the flow rate, now says it is up to the flow-rate group itself to decide whether to undertake such a step.

The government doesn't seem to be willing to do it either. They really need to do what it takes and put some kind of measurement device down there.

Anyway, despite their assurances that they are capturing most of the oil, or as big lying piece of shit CEO Tony Hayward has said, "the majority, probably the vast majority," the reality is that they aren't. They are probably not even getting half of it, and since removing any hindrances from the mangled pipe last week in their preparations to lower the containment dome over it, are releasing way more oil into the water than they originally were:

[Ira] Leifer [a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California Santa Barbara who is also a member of the government's flow-rate panel, tasked with determining the size of the oil spill] said based on the data he's seen so far, the rate of flow from the broken well has increase since the initial April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon rig, which killed 11 workers. He believes BP's decision last week to sever the well's damaged riser pipe in order to install the containment cap has increased the flow by far more than the 20 percent BP and government officials had predicted.

In fact, Leifer says, the well may be spewing what BP had called before the spill its worst-case scenario — as much as 100,000 barrels a day from a freely flowing pipe.

He said he's seen no evidence from BP to date that would be inconsistent from that dire scenario.

Judging by live undersea videos, "it looks like a freely flowing pipe," Leifer said. "From what it looks like right now it suggests to me they’re capturing a negligible fraction."

It's unclear how much oil is still escaping because scientists don't have access to enough data and the video feeds show a "disorganized cloud" of oil shooting out of open vents in the containment cap and between the riser and the cap, Wereley said.

"It’s very difficult to judge flow rates from these multiple sources," he said. "My position is that the claims (of capturing the 'vast majority' of oil) cannot be made because the flow is too complicated."

100,000 barrels is four million, two hundred thousand. 4,200,000. People have been estimating this number all along, but the government has been blowing them off, and the newspapers have all been reporting the pathetically low number of 12,000 to 19,000 barrels, which is shit.

Today is day 51 of this. Anywhere from 51,000,000 to 200,000,000 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and I don't know how many hundreds of thousands of gallons of toxic death dispersants.

All corporations and government agencies involved with the BP oil disaster are to blame

It's all part of that tired old story where money and the unrestrained pursuit of it trumps whatever logic, caution and concern may be present. I will give you the absolute best part of this post first:

The rig’s [Deepwater Horizon, the one that was pumping oil out of that hole in the ocean and then blew up] “spill response plan,” provided to The Times, includes a Web link for a contractor that goes to an Asian shopping Web site and also mentions the importance of protecting walruses, seals and sea lions, none of which inhabit the area of drilling. The agency [Minerals Management Service] approved the plan.

Amazing. Nothing short of amazing. If that is not indicative of a broken, useless government, then nothing is.

Anyway, here are some more highlights:

Deepwater oil production in the gulf, which started in 1979 but expanded much faster in the mid-1990s with new technology and federal incentives, is governed as much by exceptions to rules as by the rules themselves.

Under a process called “alternative compliance,” much of the technology used on deepwater rigs has been approved piecemeal, with regulators cooperating with industry groups to make small adjustments to guidelines that were drawn up decades ago for shallow-water drilling...

“The pace of technology has definitely outrun the regulations,” Lt. Cmdr. Michael Odom of the Coast Guard, who inspects the rigs, said last month at a hearing.

As a result, deepwater rigs operate under an ad hoc system of exceptions. The deeper the water, the further the exceptions stretch, not just from federal guidelines but also often from company policy.

So, for example, when BP officials first set their sights on extracting the oily riches under what is known as Mississippi Canyon Block 252 in the Gulf of Mexico, they asked for and received permission from federal regulators to exempt the drilling project from federal law that requires a rigorous type of environmental review, internal documents and federal records indicate...

As BP engineers planned to set certain pipes and casings for lining the well in place in the ocean floor, they had to get permission from company managers to use riskier equipment because that equipment deviated from the company’s own design and safety policies, according to internal BP documents obtained by The New York Times...

Its [the Mineral Management Service] safety inspections usually consist of helicopter visits to offshore rigs to sift through company reports of self-administered tests.

Even Ken Salazar, the interior secretary, who oversees the minerals agency, has said that oil companies have a history of “running the show” at the agency, a problem he has vowed to correct...

On the Deepwater Horizon, for example, the minerals agency approved a drilling plan for BP that cited the “worst case” for a blowout as one that might produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day, federal records show. But the agency did not require the rig to create a response plan for such a situation.

If a blowout were to occur, BP said in its plan, the first choice would be to use a containment dome to capture the leaking oil. But regulators did not require that a containment dome be kept on the rig to speed the response to a spill. After the rig explosion, BP took two weeks to build one on shore and three days to ship it out to sea before it was lowered over the gushing pipe on May 7. It did not work...

More broadly, regulators have not required technology and strategies for dealing with deepwater spills to be improved.

Engineers trying to control the blowout are using the same tactics they used in 1979 when the Ixtoc I well blew up in the Bay of Campeche off the coast of Mexico. In the earlier blowout, they first tried lowering a containment dome over the leak. When that failed, they unsuccessfully tried to inject golf balls and other material in a move called a junk shot, which was also tried and abandoned for the Deepwater Horizon...

Questions of oversight also came up in the New Orleans hearings last month. For example, Michael J. Saucier, an official with the Minerals Management Service, said that his agency “highly encouraged” — but did not require — companies to have backup systems to trigger blowout preventers in case of an emergency.

“Highly encourage?” Captain Nguyen of the Coast Guard asked. “How does that translate to enforcement?”

“There is no enforcement,” Mr. Saucier answered...

As early as June 2009, BP engineers had expressed concerns in internal documents about using certain casings for the well because they violated the company’s safety and design guidelines. But they proceeded with those casings...

More than five weeks before disaster, the rig was hit by several sudden pulsations of gas called “kicks” and a pipe had become stuck in the well. The blowout preventer, designed to seal the well in an emergency, had been discovered to be leaking fluids at least three times.

Dealing with these problems required teamwork, a challenge to the throng of different companies with responsibilities on the rig. Of the 126 people present on the day of the explosion, only eight were employees of BP. The interests of the workers did not always align.

Look at this raw display of people's pursuit of money literally producing this catastrophe:

In testimony to government investigators, rig workers repeatedly described a “natural conflict” between BP, which can make more money by completing drilling jobs quickly, and Transocean, which receives a leasing fee from BP every day that it continues drilling.

Halliburton was also on hand to provide cementing services, while a subsidiary monitored various drilling fluids. A different company provided drilling fluid systems, another provided technicians to operate the remote-control vehicles that are they eyes of the rig crew deep underwater, and yet another provided the well casing.

Amid this tangle of overlapping authority and competing interests, no one was solely responsible for ensuring the rig’s safety, and communication was a constant challenge...

BP had fallen behind schedule and over budget, paying roughly $500,000 a day to lease the rig from Transocean. The rig was 43 days late for starting a new drilling job for BP by the day of the explosion, a delay that had already cost the company more than $21 million.

With the clock ticking, bad decisions went unchecked, warning signs went unheeded and small lapses compounded.

On April 1, a job log written by a Halliburton employee, Marvin Volek, warns that BP’s use of cement “was against our best practices.”

An April 18 internal Halliburton memorandum indicates that Halliburton again warned BP about its practices, this time saying that a “severe” gas flow problem would occur if the casings were not centered more carefully.

Around that same time, a BP document shows, company officials chose a type of casing with a greater risk of collapsing.

Despite noticing cementing problems, BP skipped a quality test of the cement around the pipe. Federal regulators also gave the rig a pass at several critical moments. After the rig encountered several problems, including the gas kicks and the pipe stuck in the well, the regulators did not demand a halt to the operation. Instead, they gave permission for a delay in a safety test of the blowout preventer.

What a clear case that this was entirely preventable (even once the hole had already been drilled) and resulted purely from a thorough lack of concern and a pervasive failure to hold anyone accountable for more than minimal safety standards.

More:

About 10 hours before the explosion, the challenges of trying to keep the pressure in the well under control led to an argument among the workers about how best to finish the well and move the rig to the next site.

Douglas Brown, a Transocean mechanic on the rig, told investigators that an unnamed BP official whom he called “the company man” had instructed rig workers to execute a new plan for removing the riser and sealing the well. Mr. Brown testified that workers thought the plan was too risky. But he could not hear details of the argument that ensued.

“The company man was basically saying, ‘Well, this is how it’s going to be,’ ” Mr. Brown told investigators at a hearing on May 26 near New Orleans, adding that the Transocean rig workers “reluctantly agreed.”

Finally, it's a bit saddening that Obama is so beholden to business interests. Not that it's surprising; he is a president after all. It's just that I've never seen anything of this magnitude before and with someone who's supposed to be all about change and difference and newness and all that in office, I would like for him to do something new instead of trying to keep everything cool. He should be ripping people's heads off, not silencing Ken Salazar:

But the partnership between BP and the government has strained along with the failure of efforts to plug the well. Mr. Salazar, for example, assured the public on May 2 that the administration was keeping its “boot on the neck” of BP. Next he was being publicly chastised by President Obama for using antagonistic language.

I wish someone had a boot on BP's neck. But no one does. And no one will. They are part of our money-theistic religion and are therefore sacrosanct.

The whole story is definitely worth reading.

BP's tally of dead birds thus far

As of a couple of days ago, this is the official count of how many birds BP has killed in the last month and a half:

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reported 522 dead birds — at least 38 of them oiled — along the Gulf coast states, and more than 80 oiled birds have been rescued. It's not clear exactly how many of the deaths can be attributed to the spill.

I'm going to go ahead and say all of them, plus many more that will never be found.

Of course, that figure is buried in the bottom of a BP oil hole article, cause no one cares about that stuff nearly as much.

Again, I will say that nothing anyone got from that fucking hole in the bottom of the ocean was ever worth the life of one bird, fish, dolphin, turtle or anything else they have killed and have yet to kill through their bottomless greed and utter lack of regard for whatever "safety" can be assured aboard something as destructive and ruinous as a petroleum extraction platform.

I wish people would stop worshipping perceived "rights" of capital in this country and just go ahead and fucking burn down everything BP and its rapacious managers own.

BP is in the process of expanding its oil pollution to Florida

Any day now, Florida will be able to bask in the glory of BP's free oil program. And I thought we were dealing with capitalists here.

The giant Gulf of Mexico oil slick was Wednesday closing in on the pristine Florida coast, as deep sea robotic submarines hit a new snag in BP's latest bid to contain the spill.

Forecasters said it was virtually certain Florida's panhandle, a major draw for tourists from around the world, would be hit by the spill this week.

The latest official projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) show the slick to be about seven miles (11 kilometers) off the state's shores, a Florida official told AFP.

"Within the next 72 hours it should affect our coast," said the official with Florida's Environmental Protection Agency, asking not to be named.

Florida would be the fourth state hit by the oil since an April 20 explosion ripped through the Deepwater Horizon rig, 50 miles (80 kilometers) off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 workers. The BP-operated rig sank two days later.

What a bunch of lucky people those Floridians are. FREE OIL. And here I am, paying for it like a sucker.

Tony Hayward is sorry

Thanks big guy. Everything is cool now. Promise.

BP facing civil fines of $86 million a day

Yes, shit fucking yes, PLEASE let this happen:

A clause buried deep in the U.S. Clean Water Act may expose BP and others to civil fines that aren't limited to any finite cap -- unlike a $75 million limit on compensation for economic damages. The Act allows the government to seek civil penalties in court for every drop of oil that spills into U.S. navigable waters, including the area of BP's leaking well.

As a result, the U.S. government could seek to fine BP or others up to $4,300 for every barrel leaked into the U.S. Gulf, according to legal experts and official documents.

It is truly the least these fucking people deserve. They are a bunch of liars, a horde of greedy plunderers who would gladly ruin the entire planet (save for their gated communities) if not kept in check by the ribbons of regulation currently now upon them.

That's oil for you. That's capitalism for you. You need to have assholes like this in every sector of industry, finance and government to give you cheap everything. But no one wants to face that. They want to blame BP and guiltlessly drive to Walmart. And we have them. We have assholes in spades. What a bunch of pieces of shit we are. We all just go on with our lives, letting these people fuck us and everything around us.

BP does not allow cleanup crews on the water to wear masks or complain publicly

I guess they are trying to avoid giving people the idea that crude oil is unhealthy.

A fisherman who was hospitalized after becoming ill while cleaning up oil in the Gulf of Mexico has filed a temporary restraining order in federal court against oil company BP.

John Wunstell Jr., is asking BP to give the workers masks and not harass workers who publicly voice their health concerns.

Wunstell, a shrimper, said he was paid by BP to use his boat, Ramie's Wish, to clean up oil that has been gushing into the Gulf since an oil rig sank about 40 miles off the Louisiana coast, gushing an estimated 19,000 barrels (798, 000 gallons) of crude a day.

In an affidavit, Wunstell wrote he started experiencing severe headaches and nasal irritation on May 24. Over the next few days, he also developed nosebleeds, an upset stomach, and aches.

On Friday, Wunstell was airlifted to West Jefferson Medical Center in Marrero, Louisiana, where he remained hospitalized Sunday...

In his affidavit, Wunstell described his experience at the hospital.

"At West Jefferson, there were tents set up outside the hospital, where I was stripped of my clothing, washed with water and several showers, before I was allowed into the hospital," Wunstell said. "When I asked for my clothing, I was told that BP had confiscated all of my clothing and it would not be returned."

The restraining order requests that BP refrain from "altering, testing or destroying clothing or any other evidence or potential evidence" when workers become ill.

Man, turns out it's all a lie. I hate when I've been had:

Graham MacEwen, a spokesman for BP, said he could not comment on the restraining order, or on allegations that BP confiscated clothing.

He denied accusations from Clint Guidry, president of the Louisiana Shrimpers Association, that BP has been threatening workers who speak out about health concerns.

Fishermen contacted by CNN have declined to speak publicly.

Some, who are making as much as $3,000 a day cleaning up the oil, have said they fear losing their jobs with BP.

"The BP oil spill wiped out their professions and their jobs this year and possibly years down the road," Klick said. "The only work they can get right now is with BP."

The BP spokesman said there have been no threats against workers for speaking out.

That's good to hear, that they aren't threatening them. I guess they also aren't threatening them for failing to wear masks, as they are admittedly not providing their workers with them:

Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air.

BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.

"We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them.

According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks.

"Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

Fired for wearing masks, awesome.

Also, Tony Hayward makes up the most fantastic fucking lies. Why hasn't someone offed this fuck yet?

Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP, offered another explanation for the fishermen's illness: spoiled food.

"Food poisoning is clearly a big issue," Hayward said Sunday. "It's something we've got to be very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of keeping the Army operating. You know, the Army marches on their stomachs."

An expert on foodborne illness cast doubt on Hayward's theory.

"Headaches, shortness of breath, nosebleeds -- there's nothing there that suggests foodborne illness," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "I don't know what these people have, but it sounds more like a respiratory illness."

Holy shit. The shit he says isn't even realistic. I guess it doesn't have to be. As long as he pulls in money, no one cares. It's not like he's up for reelection.

Showing that BP's gusher in the ocean floor was just short of deliberate

Did they intend for the rig to explode and the hole to spew oil? Of course not. That means they lose money. But they did consistently ignore safety-related warnings that would necessitate them shutting down their operation, however shortly, in order to address the obvious problems indicating an impending explosion. They knew this was a potential, increasingly likely scenario, and they did nothing but keep drilling and pulling out oil:

The documents show that in March, after several weeks of problems on the rig, BP was struggling with a loss of “well control.” And as far back as 11 months ago, it was concerned about the well casing and the blowout preventer.

On June 22, for example, BP engineers expressed concerns that the metal casing the company wanted to use might collapse under high pressure.

“This would certainly be a worst-case scenario,” Mark E. Hafle, a senior drilling engineer at BP, warned in an internal report. “However, I have seen it happen so know it can occur.”

The company went ahead with the casing, but only after getting special permission from BP colleagues because it violated the company’s safety policies and design standards. The internal reports do not explain why the company allowed for an exception. BP documents released last week to The Times revealed that company officials knew the casing was the riskier of two options...

In April of this year, BP engineers concluded that the casing was “unlikely to be a successful cement job,” according to a document, referring to how the casing would be sealed to prevent gases from escaping up the well.

The document also says that the plan for casing the well is “unable to fulfill M.M.S. regulations,” referring to the Minerals Management Service...

On Tuesday Congress released a memorandum with preliminary findings from BP’s internal investigation, which indicated that there were warning signs immediately before the explosion on April 20, including equipment readings suggesting that gas was bubbling into the well, a potential sign of an impending blowout.

A parade of witnesses at hearings last week told about bad decisions and cut corners in the days and hours before the explosion of the rig, but BP’s internal documents provide a clearer picture of when company and federal officials saw problems emerging.

In addition to focusing on the casing, investigators are also focusing on the blowout preventer, a fail-safe device that was supposed to slice through a drill pipe in a last-ditch effort to close off the well when the disaster struck. The blowout preventer did not work, which is one of the reasons oil has continued to spill into the gulf, though the reason it failed remains unclear...

The documents show that in March, after problems on the rig that included drilling mud falling into the formation, sudden gas releases known as “kicks” and a pipe falling into the well, BP officials informed federal regulators that they were struggling with a loss of “well control.”

On at least three occasions, BP records indicate, the blowout preventer was leaking fluid, which the manufacturer of the device has said limits its ability to operate properly.

“The most important thing at a time like this is to stop everything and get the operation under control,” said Greg McCormack, director of the Petroleum Extension Service at the University of Texas, Austin, offering his assessment about the documents...

Bob Sherrill, an expert on blowout preventers and the owner of Blackwater Subsea, an engineering consulting firm, said the conditions on the rig in February and March and the language used by the operator referring to a loss of well control “sounds like they were facing a blowout scenario.”

This is an open-and-shut case of capitalist negligence. We're gonna need a lot of ropes for this one. I would pay dearly to watch these motherfuckers hung in their suits. Maybe we can dip them in oil, set them on fire, and then hang them with steel cables, as ropes would burn off very quickly. Wait, no, that's good, stick with the ropes. We will dip them in oil, set them on fire, hang them with ropes, let them hang for a second until the rope burns off, just to add agony, then watch them writhe on the ground until they die.

BP's hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico is still gushing

Watch their oilvision to witness it. Around three million gallons a day, despite BP and the government's ass-covering lies. Today must be day 40, I believe. 120,000 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. Eclipsed the Exxon Valdez spill, previously the worst in US history, in four days.

It's not so bad though:

BP CEO Tony Hayward told Britain's The Guardian newspaper that the spill was small in proportion to the Gulf.

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume," Hayward said.

WHY HASN'T SOMEONE TRIED TO PLUG THE HOLE WITH THIS PIECE OF SHIT YET?

BP corporate policy views workers as one of the three little pigs

Really. And then they assessed which pig's housing was the least financially risky. Then people died as a result of it.

The people running this company should be ashamed; I doubt they are. Either way, they should be set on fire.

BP refusing to clean up Louisiana marshes

This is pretty much the most important place on land that's fucked right now. This is the source of so much life and is so delicate. And BP is doing NOTHING.

Fucking corporate lies

You have 20,000 people working the cleanup? GET MORE. NOW. FUCK YOUR PROFITS, FUCK YOUR INVESTORS, FUCK YOUR BOARD OF DIRECTORS. FIX IT MOTHERFUCKER. I hope the piece of shit gets an ulcer that eats through his ribcage.

"I probably should apologize to folks that we haven't been giving more data on that," Suttles said when asked why it took so long for BP to announce it had suspended the top kill. "It was nothing more than we are so focused on the operation itself."

YOU SHOULD ALSO PROBABLY FUCKING KILL YOURSELF AND ALL PEOPLE RESPONSIBLE FOR RUNNING THE COMPANY.

Where are suicide bombers when you need them? People wasting their time trying to blow up a truck in Times Square. Get a real fucking target.