BP's Secret Deepwater Blowout | Truthout

Only 17 months be­fore BP's De­ep­wat­er Horizon rig suf­fered a de­ad­ly blowout in the Gulf of Mexico, an­oth­er BP de­ep­wat­er oil plat­form also blew out.

You've heard and seen much about the Gulf dis­ast­er that kil­led 11 BP work­ers. If you have not heard about the ear­li­er blowout, it's be­cause BP has kept the full story under wraps. Nor did BP in­form Con­gress or US safety re­gulators, and BP, along with its oil in­dust­ry partn­ers, have pre­fer­red to keep it that way.

The ear­li­er blowout oc­cur­red in Sep­temb­er 2008 on BP's Centr­al Azeri plat­form in the Cas­pian Sea.

As one memo mar­ked "sec­ret" puts it, "Given the ex­plosive poten­ti­al, BP was quite for­tunate to have been able to evacuate every­one safe­ly and to pre­vent any gas ig­ni­tion." The Cas­pian oil plat­form was a spark away from ex­plod­ing, but luck was with the 211 rig work­ers.

It was eeri­ly similar to the Gulf cat­astrop­he as it in­vol­ved BP's con­trover­si­al "quick set" drill­ing ce­ment.

The ques­tion we have to ask: If BP had laid out the true and full facts to Con­gress and re­gulators about the ear­li­er blowout, would those 11 Gulf work­ers be alive today - and the Gulf Coast spared oil-spill poisons?

The bi­gg­er ques­tion is, why is there no clear law to re­quire dis­closure? If you bump into an­oth­er car on the Los An­geles freeway, you have to re­port it. But there seems no clear re­quire­ment on cor­pora­tions to re­port a dis­ast­er in which know­ledge of it could save lives.

Five months prior to the De­ep­wat­er Horizon ex­plos­ion, BP's Chief of Ex­plora­tion in the Gulf, David Rainey, tes­tified be­fore Con­gress against in­creased safety re­gula­tion of its de­ep­wat­er drill­ing op­era­tion. De­spite the com­pany's know­ledge of the Cas­pian blowout a year ear­li­er, the oil com­pany's man told the Sen­ate En­er­gy Com­mit­tee that BP's met­hods are, "both safe and pro­tec­tive of the en­viron­ment."

Rea­l­ly? BP's quick-dry ce­ment saves money, but other drill­ers find it too risky in de­ep­wat­er. It was a key fac­tor in the Cas­pian blowout. Would US re­gulators or Con­gress have per­mit­ted BP to con­tinue to use this ce­ment had they known? Would they have in­ves­tigated be­fore is­su­ing per­mits to drill?

This is not about BP the in­dust­ry Bad Boy. This is about a sys­tem that con­dones sil­ence, the with­hold­ing of life-and-death in­for­ma­tion.

Even BP's oil com­pany partn­ers, in­clud­ing Chev­ron and Exxon, were kept in the dark. It is only through WikiLeaks that my own in­ves­tiga­tions team was able to con­firm in­sid­er tips I had re­ceived about the Cas­pian blowout. In that same con­fiden­ti­al memo men­tioned ear­li­er, the US Em­bas­sy in Azer­baijan com­plained, "At least some of BP's [Cas­pian] partn­ers are similar­ly upset with BP's per­for­mance in this epi­sode, as they claim BP has sought to limit in­for­ma­tion flow about this event even to its [Cas­pian] partn­ers."

In de­fen­se of its be­havior, BP told me it did in fact re­port the "gas re­lease" to the re­gulators of Azer­baijan. That's small com­fort. This form­er Soviet re­pub­lic is a police state di­ctatorship pro­pped up by the BP group's oil royalt­ies. A pub­lic in­ves­tiga­tion was out of the ques­tion.

In De­cemb­er, I traveled to Baku, Azer­baijan's capit­al, to in­ves­tigate BP and the blowout for British televis­ion. I was ar­rested, though, as a foreign re­port­er, quick­ly re­leased. But my eye wit­nesses got the mes­sage and all were too af­raid tell their sto­ries on camera.

BP has, in fact, never ad­mitted a blowout oc­cur­red, though when con­fron­ted by my net­work, did not deny it. At the time, BP told curi­ous press that the work­ers had mere­ly been evacuated as a "pre­cau­tion" due to gas bubbles "in the area of" the drill­ing plat­form, im­ply­ing a be­nign natur­al gas leak from a crack in the sea floor, not a life-threatening sys­tem failure.

In its 2009 re­port to the US Securit­ies and Ex­chan­ge Com­miss­ion (SEC), BP in­ched clos­er to the full truth. Though not men­tion­ing "blowout" or "ce­ment," the com­pany placed the leak "under" the plat­form.

This points to a cruel irony: the SEC re­quires full dis­closure of events that might cause harm to the per­for­mance of BP's fin­an­ci­al securit­ies. But re­port­ing on events that might harm humans? That's not so clear.

Howev­er, the sol­u­tion is clear as could be. In­ter­nation­al cor­pora­tions should be re­quired to dis­close events that threat­en peo­ple and the en­viron­ment, not just the price of their stock.

As radia­tion wafts ac­ross the Pacific from Japan, it is clear that threats to health and safety do not re­spect nation­al bord­ers. What hap­pens in Fukus­hima or Baku af­fects lives and pro­per­ty in the USA.

"Re­gula­tion" has be­come a dirty word in US politics. Cor­pora­tions have con­vin­ced the pub­lic to fear lit­tle bureauc­rats with thick rulebooks. But let us re­memb­er why govern­ment began to re­gulate these crea­tures. As An­drew Jackson said, "Cor­pora­tions have neith­er bod­ies to kick nor souls to damn."

Kick­ing and damn­ing have no ef­fect, but rules do. And after all, when in­ter­nation­al re­gula­tion pro­tects pro­fits, as in the case of patents and co­pyrights, cor­porate America is all for it.

Our re­gulators of re­sour­ce in­dust­ries must im­pose an af­firmative re­quire­ment to tell all, es­pecial­ly when peo­ple, not just song lyrics or stock of­fer­ings, are in mort­al dang­er.

via truthout.org