BP pasted by more setbacks over US Gulf crude oil spill

21 May 2010 21 May 2010

BonTrade

Oil company BP has been pasted with a triple whammy as it tries to contain the damage to the environment and its reputation caused by its crude oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

In the space of 24 hours, US politicians called for another BP rig to be shut down, green activists scaled its London headquarters and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanded that the firm use less toxic dispersants to break up the oil slick.

US Democrats want the oil giant’s Atlantis rig, also in the Gulf of Mexico, to be shut until regulators can prove that it is operating safely. They pointed to a report by an ‘expert engineer’ casting doubt on safety procedures. They warned that an accident on the rig would within two days exceed the damage caused by the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

Meanwhile, the EPA gave BP 24 hours to come up with a less toxic form of oil dispersant than those it is using in the mammoth clean up operation, warning that the chemicals currently in use could damage marine life. And in London, Greenpeace activists scaled BP’s headquarters, unfurling a banner reading ‘British Polluters’, hours after taking out a full-page advertisement in a national newspaper slamming chief executive Tony Hayward’s renewable energy credentials.

The Obama administration has now asked BP to make public all measurements of the growing oil leak, air and water quality samples, trajectories of underwater plumes and locations of dispersants.

The request came in a letter to BP CEO Tony Hayward from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.

It said: “In responding to this oil spill, it is critical that all actions be conducted in a transparent manner, with all data and information related to the spill readily available to the US government and the American people.”