BP may face criminal charges

Oil giant BP could face criminal prosecution in connection with the deadly explosion in March at its Texas City refinery, federal officials said Friday.

.......

In September, the Occupational Safety & Health Administration, an agency of the Labor Department, fined BP $21.4 million for more than 300 willful violations following a six-month investigation of the accident.

Fifteen people were killed and more than 170 injured in what was the worst U.S. refinery accident in two decades.

Most of the violations cited by OSHA were considered "egregious willful" — the agency's most serious finding. They centered on disrepair of equipment and the company's failure to assess the risk of placing an occupied construction trailer so close to a volatile unit. Most of those killed were working inside such a trailer at the time of the explosion.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/3515594.html

With rising costs of everything these days, they probably COULDN'T AFFORD necessary maintenance and repairs!
:sarcasm:

BASTARDS!

regarding our current government. I was thinking of previous threads here at D.U. that ranked oil companies on their environmental policies and B.P.,if I remember correctly was ranked near the top, with Exxon at the bottom. I hate to say it but I do not trust our government anymore. Anything they could do to undermine reform within the fossil fuel community to take us away from oil, I would not put it past them.

ident occurs. This allows them to clean up any obvious hazards or violations. THis is how companies like BP become the death traps that they are. Instead of Congress passing laws to make "uniform standards" for rip off artists whose aim is to scam people who need to borrow money on their houses (i.e to weaken protections for consumers in states which try to protect them from these predators) maybe Congress should make uniform standards that prevent states like Texas from ass kissing companies like BP and in effect allowing them to commit murder of their employees and the people who live in surrounding area.

Interesting fact. Whenever you see one of those PRECIOUS BP adds on television, be sure to check to see which of their plants has blown up. They use those ads to counter the bad publicity. BP is a menance to society.