BP paid for officials’ meals, airfare and polar bear trip

The embattled oil and gas giant BP paid for a slew of travel and dining arrangements for senior government officials in the years leading up to the massive oil leak in the Gulf. Critics say BP got too close with regulators, neutering the government's safety watchdogs.

The Washington-based newspaper The Hill revealed a series of BP-funded trips after a review of files at the Office of Government Ethics.

Among the more notable was a BP-sponsored trip to Alaska for officials of the Food and Wildlife Service, which involved “maintenance of video surveillance at polar bear den” and a “polar bear study.”

The paper adds:

In June 2004, BP paid for meals and airfare for a trio of Interior Department officials, including then-deputy secretary J. Steven Griles, while they visited an offshore oil rig off New Orleans, La. BP split the cost with the National Ocean Industries Association.

Griles later pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice for his involvement in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, and was sentenced to 10 months in prison.



In February 2005, then-Interior Secretary Gale Norton and then-Minerals Management Service (MMS) Director Johnnie Burton attended a dedication ceremony for BP’s Thunder Horse oil rig off the coast of Texas. BP paid for travel and meals for the officials.

BP also paid for airfare and lodging in 2006 and 2007 for a trip by officials from the Fish and Wildlife Service to Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, for “maintenance of video surveillance at polar bear den” and a “polar bear study,” according to documents. 



In August 2004, six EPA officials attended a meeting on Alaska’s North Slope near Prudhoe Bay, where they stayed at BP facilities. In 2006, BP was responsible for a large oil spill in Prudhoe Bay.



Former government officials are also an important part of BP's efforts to keep regulators and Congress at bay.

"In the first three months of this year alone, the company at the heart of the current crisis, BP, has hired at least 27 lobbyists who formerly worked in Congress or the executive branch," Huffington Post's Sam Stein noted Wednesday. "The revolving door between the oil giant and elected office is spinning fast -- so much so that good government officials are hard-pressed to name a comparable organization with that much institutional clout on tap."

"In the first three months of 2010 -- the three months that immediately preceded the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon offshore oil rig -- BP spent more than $3.8 million dollars on lobbying the federal government," Stein added. "The cash was spread around seven prominent lobby shops within the D.C. area (including BP's own internal operation), who in turn employed 39 lobbyists to help the company push its legislative interests. That nearly 70 percent of those hired guns have experience in elected office doesn't surprise good government officials because those are after all the most sought-after hires on K Street."

BP also hired a spokeswoman this week who served in the Bush Administration.

Anne Womack Kolton, former head of public affairs at the Department of Energy and Cheney's onetime campaign press secretary, took over BP's public relations message this week.

While at Cheney's side, Kolton defended the secrecy of the Vice President's Energy task force, a group which held secretive meetings with energy company executives. When the General Accounting Office -- the research arm of Congress -- sued the Administraton for records relating to Cheney's meetings, Kolton (then Womack) was at his side.

‘New York Times’ fails to interview a single flotilla member about killings

This is amazing. The Israeli government held the hundreds of illegally-arrested people from the Gaza Flotilla incommunicado for several days to give Israel's version of the deadly raid time to harden. But yesterday, Israel started to release and deport the prisoners.

The London Financial Times then did exactly what a newspaper is supposed to do; it asked the detainees for their side of the story. In a short article, Vita Bekker found people like Norazma Abdullah, from Malaysia, who challenged the Israeli account:

[The Israeli commandos] fired with some rubber bullets, but after some time they used live ammunition. Five were dead on the spot, and after that we surrendered.

Let us turn now to The New York Times. In today's print edition, the main article, on page 1, is not directly about the Gaza Flotilla at all -- but a dispatch from Washington quoting "senior American officials" suggesting Israel should relax the blockade. Inside the paper, on page 4, we do see a story about the actual events, written by Michael Slackman, with contributions from 4 other Times reporters. The story repeats the Israeli version, that

soldiers opened fire when they said they were attacked by passengers with chains, knives, bars and clubs.

But none of The Times's army of correspondents found a single activist to interview. The Times did manage to locate Ehud Barak, the Israeli defense minister, and a couple of Israeli experts, but not one of the people who had just seen (at least) 9 people killed were worthy of inclusion.

The current online version of the Times story still has no direct quotes from the actual participants, although it adds the news that one of the dead may have been an American citizen (of Turkish background). But it does include an intriguing revelation,

The senior Turkish official also said forensic examination of the bodies showed that one of the dead had been shot at very close range.

This startling new fact is buried in the 7th paragraph of the online article.

Will The Times pursue this angle? Or will we continue to have to look at other publications to find out the simple truth?

P.S. Keith Olbermann interviewed Ambassador Peck yesterday, Peck was aboard.

Sarkozy caught up in kickbacks scandal

A report by Luxembourg police has revealed President Sarkozy's involvement in a bribery scandal in the sale of French submarines to Pakistan in 1994.

It is suspected that the money from the contract was used to finance a 1995 presidential campaign managed by Mr. Sarkozy to support candidate Edouard Balladur against Jacques Chirac, France 24 reports.

On the sidelines of the sale of the submarines, tens of millions of euros were received by a company called Heine.

The reports suggest that Nicolas Sarkozy, who at the time served as French finance minister in 1994, may have been involved in the creation of this company.

“We stress that Edouard Balladur was a candidate in the 1995 presidential election against Jacques Chirac and that he was supported by part of the RPR [Gaullist party], including Nicolas Sarkozy," the police report says.

A number of lawmakers have called for French judges to obtain the police documents and investigate on them.

It is suspected that the deal was linked to an attack that killed 11 French engineers in Pakistan in 2002.

Feds Approve New Gulf Oil Well off La as the Marine Life Washes Ashore

CONTRAST THIS:

New Gulf Oil Well Approved here:

"I'm outraged," said Kieran Suckling, executive director for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity. "How is it that shallow water drilling suddenly became safe again?"

Bandon Oil and Gas first sought the permit in April shortly after the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank. The permit was approved Wednesday morning, according to MMS records.

Suckling said the administration was misleading the public by quietly resuming work in shallow waters while acting as if it was taking a tough look at deepwater work."

WITH THIS CLICK HERE FOR PICTURES

Read entire article Dying, dead marine wildlife paint dark, morbid picture of Gulf Coast following oil spill*

" Here's what President Obama didn't see when he visited the Gulf Coast: a dead dolphin rotting in the shore weeds.

"When we found this dolphin it was filled with oil. Oil was just pouring out of it. It was the saddest darn thing to look at," said a BP contract worker who took the Daily News on a surreptitious tour of the wildlife disaster unfolding in Louisiana.

His motive: simple outrage.

"There is a lot of coverup for BP. They specifically informed us that they don't want these pictures of the dead animals. They know the ocean will wipe away most of the evidence. It's important to me that people know the truth about what's going on here," the contractor said.

"The things I've seen: They just aren't right. All the life out here is just full of oil. I'm going to show you what BP never showed the President."

6 Reasons We Can't Fix The Oil Spill

The much-vaunted "top kill" attempt to stop the worst oil spill in U.S. history has failed, adding yet another failure to the joint BP and U.S. mission to curb the oil that is already destroying the Gulf of Mexico's chemical balance, marine and bird populations, and delicate coastlines. Why are we struggling so to stop and contain the oil leak?

• 'Fix-It' Faith in Technology 'Misplaced' The New York Times' Elisabeth Rosenthal writes, "Americans have long had an unswerving belief that technology will save us — it is the cavalry coming over the hill, just as we are about to lose the battle. And yet, as Americans watched scientists struggle to plug the undersea well over the past month, it became apparent that our great belief in technology was perhaps misplaced."

• Not Enough Regulation The Los Angeles Times' Doyle McManus asks, "Does it show that the federal government should be given more power to regulate energy industries, just as the financial crisis showed that Washington needed more power to regulate Wall Street?" He answers, "On that count, this crisis is very different from Katrina, which was mostly about governments' failures to prepare for a natural disaster. The oil spill fits into a different political narrative: the Democrats' insistence on the need for more federal regulation, in this case to protect the environment. In the face of events, voters may take a second look at that proposition."

• Our Limited Knowledge of Deep Sea The New York Times' William Broad writes, "Strange as it sounds, we know more about distant planets than we do about the deep sea. ... Inky darkness, icy temperatures and, most of all, crushing pressures conspire to make deep exploration daunting if not impossible. That is why scientists estimate that humans have glimpsed perhaps only a millionth of what there is down there to see. That also helps explain why a runaway oil well on the seabed in the Gulf of Mexico is a massive calamity, with crews struggling to stop the gushing crude. It is the brutal nature of the abyss."

• Regulators and Industry Are Too Cozy Newsweek's Evan Thomas and Daniel Stone discuss "the limits of government regulation." They say that "the oil companies and the federal government grew a little complacent" in a way that "underscores an uncomfortable truth about government regulation in the modern age. The government is dependent on industry for essential know-how. ... Inevitably, when government regulators are dependent on the industries they regulate, coziness and sometimes corruption creep in. The [Minerals Management Service] appears to have been no exception."

• White House Too Deferential To BP The Wall Street Journal's Miguel Bustillo and Guy Chazan write, "initial hopefulness has eroded in recent days as the federal government has continued looking for direction to BP, which has been unable to put a stop to the runaway spill despite company and government spending of more than $930 million."

• Regulation Should Emphasize Oversight, Not Bans The Cleveland Plain-Dealer declares, "the cozy era of insider U.S. oil industry regulation has to end." However, "Now the president risks a whiplash in the other direction with tough directives that suggest an excessively cumbersome environmental review process for each well could be in store. What's needed is effective oversight, not knee-jerk bans."

Low-lying Pacific islands 'growing not sinking' as sea levels rise

Many low-lying islands in the Pacific are growing in size to counter the effects of rising sea levels, according to new research.

Scientists have feared that many of the small islands throughout the South Pacific will eventually disappear under rising sea levels caused by climate change.

But two researchers who measured 27 islands where local sea levels have risen 4.8 inches over the past 60 years, found just four had diminished in size.

The study found that the coral islands are able to respond to changes in weather patterns and climate, with coral debris eroded from encircling reefs pushed up onto the islands' coasts by winds and waves.

Professor Paul Kench of Auckland University's environment school said that the study shows the islands are coping with sea-level change, with higher waves and water depth supplying sand and gravel from coral reefs.

Professor Kench said: 'It has been thought that as the sea level goes up, islands will sit there and drown. But they won't. The sea level will go up and the island will start responding.'

'They're not all growing, they're changing. They've always changed ... but the consistency (with which) some of them have grown is a little surprising,' said.

Tuvalu, a coral island group that climate change campaigners have repeatedly predicted will be drowned by rising seas, has its highest point just 14 feet above sea level.

The research, which appeared in this week's New Scientist, found that seven of Tuvalu's nine islands had grown by more than 3 percent on average over the past 60 years.

In 1972, Cyclone Bebe dumped 346 acres of sediment on the eastern reef of Tuvalu, increasing the area of Funafuti, the main island, by 10 percent.

Another island, Funamanu, gained nearly 30 percent of its previous area.

On World Environment Day in 2008, Kiribati President Anote Tong warned parts of his island nation were already being submerged, forcing some of Kiribati's 94,000 people living in shoreline village communities to be relocated from century-old sites.

Worst case scenarios showed Kiribati would disappear into the sea within a century, he said at the time.

Professor Kench added: 'In other words, they (the islands) are slowly moving ... migrating across their reef platforms.'

'As the sea-level conditions and wave conditions are changing, the islands are adjusting to that.'

But he warned an accelerated rate of sea-level rise could be 'the critical environmental threat to the small island nations,' with 'a very rapid rate of island destruction' possible from a water depth beyond a certain threshold. That threshold currently is unknown.

Australian sea level oceanographer John Hunter said the findings 'are good news and not a surprise.'

'Coral islands can keep up with some sea-level rise, but (there's also) ocean warming ... and ocean acidification ... that are certainly problematic for the corals.

'Sea-level rise can actually make the islands grow - as it apparently is doing,' said Hunter.

'Those morons don't know what they're doing': James Cameron's view as yet another BP oil spill fix fails

'Titanic' director James Cameron has labelled those trying to clean up the BP oil spill 'morons' after revealed BP turned down his offer of help.

Mr Cameron also said he knew some 'really, really, really smart people' who could help with the spill. The director is considered an expert in undersea filming and who has extensive experience working with submersible robots,

'Over the last few weeks I've watched, as we all have, with growing horror and heartache, watching what's happening in the Gulf and thinking those morons don't know what they're doing,' he said yesterday at the All Things Digital technology conference.

Not another setback! An underwater robotic arm, right, attempts free the diamond saw that became stuck while being used to cut through the pipe at the site of oil leak in this image from last night

Making things worse: Oil can be seen pouring out of several spots near the blowout preventer today after the saw being used to slice through the riser pipe had snagged after slicing through about half of the pipe

He did not say explicitly who he meant when he referred to 'those morons'.

His comments came a day after he participated in the meeting at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Washington to 'brainstorm' solutions to the oil spill.

Mr Cameron said he has offered to help the government and BP in dealing with the spill. He said he was 'graciously' turned away by the British energy giant.

'Morons': 'Titanic' director James Cameron

He said he has not spoken with the White House about his offer, and said that the outside experts who took part in the EPA meeting were now 'writing it all up and putting in reports to the various agencies'.

The film director has helped develop deep-sea submersible equipment and other underwater ocean technology for the making of documentaries exploring the wrecks of the ocean liner Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck some two miles below the surface.

The BP oil spill off the U.S. Gulf Coast is located a mile below the surface.

'I know really, really, really smart people that work typically at depths much greater than what that well is at,' he said.

While acknowledging that his contacts in the deep-sea industry do not drill for oil, Cameron said that they are accustomed to operating various underwater vehicles and electronic optical fibre systems.

'Most importantly,' he added, 'they know the engineering that it requires to get something done at that depth.'

Among the key issues that Mr Cameron said he is interested in helping the government with are methods of monitoring the oil leak and investigating it.

'The government really needs to have its own independent ability to go down there and image the site, survey the site and do its own investigation,' he said.

'Because if you're not monitoring it independently, you're asking the perpetrator to give you the video of the crime scene,' he added.

WHAT THEY'VE TRIED - AND HOW IT'S GONE WRONG

BP fumbled its latest underwater experiment with the wild Gulf gusher - just like every other endeavour the company has tried to fix America's worst oil spill.

First, a 100-ton, four-story box couldn't contain the spill because icelike crystals clogged the top.

Then, a straw-like device that actually did capture crude was inconsistent at best.

The supposed top kill - shooting heavy mud and junk into the well - couldn't overcome the pressure of the oil.

And the most recent risky gambit ran into trouble a mile under the sea yesterday when a diamond-tipped saw became stuck after slicing through about half of the blown-out well.

It took BP 12 hours to free the saw, and the company hopes to use giant shears similar to an oversized garden tool to snip off the pipe.

However, the cut won't be as clean if successful, and a looser fitting cap will have to be placed over the spill.

No timetable was given for when that might start, a familiar refrain in this six-week-old disaster.

All along, the company has been drilling a relief well, the best option at stopping the gusher - but it's still two months away.

Mr Cameron made two documentaries about the wreck of the Titanic as well as the blockbuster 1997 movie 'Titanic' using a small fleet of specially designed remotely operated underwater vehicles.

He said his qualifications are not based on his background as a movie director but on his years of involvement in the deep-sea industry.

The well has leaked anywhere from 21 million to 45 million gallons (80 million to 170 million liters) since an explosion on the rig that killed 11 people on April 20.

Up to 125 miles of coastline in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi have been fouled by the oil. Now it is threatening the white beaches of Florida.

BP's latest attempt to stop it, using a diamond saw to cut through the pipe, failed after the saw got stuck in the pipe.

That so-called cut-and-cap method, is considered risky because slicing away a section of the 20-inch-wide riser could remove kinks in the pipe and temporarily increase the flow of oil by as much as 20 per cent.

And the situation on the water's surface becomes more dire with each day.

Oil drifted perilously close to the Florida Panhandle's famous sugar-white beaches, and crews on the mainland were doing everything possible to limit the catastrophe.

As the edge of the slick drifted within seven miles of Pensacola's beaches, emergency workers rushed to link the last in a miles-long chain of booms designed to fend off the oil.

Forecasters said the oil would probably wash up by tomorrow, threatening the miles of beach that are a favourite tourist destination for Britons.

Officials said the slick sighted offshore consisted in part of 'tar mats' about 500 feet by 2,000 feet in size.

County officials set up the booms to block oil from reaching inland waterways but planned to leave beaches unprotected because they are too difficult to defend against the action of the waves and because they are easier to clean up.