Lawyers for BP and federal regulators appear to be working hard to settle a civil lawsuit the government brought against the oil company in connection with the 2006 pipeline spills in the Prudhoe Bay oil field.
You see, the continuing oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico (something of this magnitude can't reasonably be called a "spill" anymore) resulting from the Deepwater Horizon explosion really shouldn't be a surprise.
It is the "crown jewel," the culmination of years of what is clearly BP's corporate policy: The accumulation of money ranks ahead of the law, human safety, and the environment.
The article continues:
The U.S. Department of Justice on March 31, 2009, sued BP on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and federal pipeline regulators.The suit seeks millions of dollars in fines for alleged water and air pollution violations, as well as failure to meet deadlines in a corrective action order from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
BP's lawyers have denied many of the federal claims, and say some of the deadlines in the corrective action order were impossible to meet.
Well of course they were. Corrective action costs money.
I'm wondering if these were the same liability lawyers who held some of survivors from the Deepwater Horizon rig hostage, and browbeat them into signing away their right to sue.
Anyway - this settlement is peanuts to BP. As such, it looks as though it will be resolved in less than a decade.
The litigation resulting from the Gulf will not be settled in my lifetime. How much environmental damage caused may never be fully assessed.
The people running BP deserve jail time. A lot of it.
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