Is it time to consider barring BP from federal oil leases?

The federal government should consider barring oil giant BP from drilling on federal land or holding onto its existing leases, says a recently retired federal attorney who spent years dogging BP's operations in Alaska.

"There comes a point in time where we say enough is enough," said Jeanne Pascal, who worked for 18 years as a Seattle-based attorney for the Environmental Protection Agency. "Because BP has definitely turned into a major serial environmental criminal."

Pascal said that BP has been convicted of environmental violations three times since 2000 — twice in Alaska — and that the April 20 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico that sparked what President Barack Obama calls the biggest environmental disaster in the nation's history fits a pattern of behavior. She said BP got off too easy when it was allowed to plead guilty in 2007 to a misdemeanor for a record North Slope spill in 2006. No individual was charged.

Scott West agrees. He was the EPA special agent in charge of the criminal investigation division in Seattle that investigated BP Alaska's operations.

"The people who are making the decisions playing fast and loose on that (Gulf) rig — 'Hurry up, we are over time, we are over budget, let's take the shortcut' — if they'd seen some of their peers go to jail for those kinds of decisions, maybe they would have said, 'You know, my bonus this year just isn't worth it,' " West said, referring to congressional allegations that BP cut corners to save money on the Deepwater Horizon project.


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/06/25/96591/is-it-time-to-consider-barring.html

Maybe he's waiting until we get payment. If they knew we were cutting the strings they might be less inclined to comply. :shrug:

They should be banned from ANY lease auctions. They have continuously demonstrated a complete disregard for the laws of this country, they have racked up (literally) 70 times more safety violations than all the other oil producers COMBINED, and now they've destroyed an ecosystem, lives/livelihoods, and several states economies with no resolution in site. No other business/company would get away with this kind of BS. They should be barred for at least the next 20 years.....at a minimum. Price William Sound is just beginning to come back to normal and they are STILL finding oil under the sand on the beaches left by the Exxon Valdez. NO MORE!!!!!