NYT editorial: Reckoning in the Gulf

Editorial

Reckoning in the Gulf

Published: June 2, 2010

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Justice’s investigation will run parallel to an inquiry by a special commission appointed by President Obama to discover the causes of the disaster, assess the performance of federal oversight agencies and recommend ways to prevent similar calamities. The White House must take special care that both are allowed to do a complete job. Even though their missions are different — the Justice Department mainly concerned with lawbreaking, the commission with safety — overlap is inevitable.

Both, for instance, will be talking to many of the same witnesses from government and industry. Unlike the Justice Department, the commission does not have subpoena powers. Congress should grant that power if only to make sure that witnesses from an industry that is accustomed to going its own way actually show up.

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One relevant law is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990, enacted after the Exxon Valdez spill, which imposes monetary penalties for every barrel of spilled oil — even if negligence is not found, but more if it is. Another is the Clean Water Act, which carries both civil and criminal penalties for polluting waterways. BP could also be found negligent under the Marine Mammal Protection Act because it failed to obtain necessary federal permits to drill in areas inhabited by endangered whales.

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Senator Barbara Boxer, who was pressing Mr. Holder to act, raised one more ominous possibility: that BP may have made false and misleading statements to federal authorities in the 2009 exploratory drilling plan it submitted to the Minerals Management Service. The plan asserted that the company had “proven equipment and technology” to respond to a blowout. Given the ad hoc nature of BP’s response, Ms. Boxer has suggested, that assertion now seems misleading or even false.

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