BP spends millions lobbying as it drills ever deeper & the environment pays

Source: Guardian UK

BP spends millions lobbying as it drills ever deeper and the environment pays

The oil major BP spends aggressively to influence US regulatory insight, and many would argue this has bought it leniency

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BP is one of the most powerful corporations operating in the United States. Its 2009 revenues of $327bn are enough to rank BP as the third-largest corporation in the country. It spends aggressively to influence US policy and regulatory oversight.

In 2009, the company spent nearly $16m on lobbying the federal government, ranking it among the 20 highest spenders that year, and shattering its own previous record of $10.4m set in 2008. In 2008, it also spent more than $530,000 on federal elections, placing it among the oil industry's top 10 political spenders.

This money has bought BP great access and, many would argue, leniency. "I personally believe that BP, with its corporate culture of greed over profits, murdered my parents," Eva Rowe testified before Congress in 2007. The Congress was investigating the worst workplace accident in the US in more than 15 years, a massive explosion at BP's Texas City Refinery in March 2005 that killed 15 workers, including Rowe's parents, and injured 180.

The US Chemical Safety Board, an independent federal agency, investigated the blast and released a devastating indictment of BP. "The Texas City disaster was caused by organisational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP corporation," the 2007 report found. "The combination of cost-cutting, production pressures and failure to invest caused a progressive deterioration of safety at the refinery."



Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/may/02/bp-deepwater-horizon-oil-spills

Not a penny for anything else.