BP Claimed It Leaked More Oil in 2006 and 2008 than It Did in 2010

BP Refuses to Put Figure on How Much Oil was Leaked in Gulf Oil Disaster

March 29, 2011

The Lookout - BP executives may now be fretting over the prospect of going to jail on manslaughter charges—but they're not easing up on their aggressive efforts to spin the legacy of last summer's disastrous Gulf oil spill. In its first sustainability report since the Deepwater Horizon explosion triggered the spill last year, BP claims that it leaked more oil in 2006 and 2008 than it did in 2010. Wait, what?!

Yes, right there on the first page of the report, the company lists the amount of oil, CO2 and methane it released into the environment in 2010. However, on closer inspection it turns out that those figures don't include the oil leaked in last summer's Gulf spill. The reason? According to a message from the company in the report's fine print, "no accurate determination" of the extent of the disaster has been made to date. The survey goes on to note that the company decided to omit that embarrassing incident in the Gulf "due to our reluctance to report data that has such a high degree of uncertainty." So they merely chose not to factor in the biggest offshore oil spill in American history.

Now, keep in mind that, in the past year, scores of scientists from across the world have poured over data and reviewed video footage of the flow of oil spewing from BP's busted well on the floor of the Gulf. And by consulting such sources, researchers have offered their own estimates of how much oil entered the Gulf at BP's behest. What's more, a vast range of experts who'd been following the spill closely agreed that the U.S. government's final estimate that BP had released roughly 4.9 million barrels into the Gulf seemed reasonably accurate.

BP officials, of course, cried foul and challenged the numbers, just as they did from the first day of the spill onward—they insisted on their own preferred figure of 5,000 barrels per day, which of course made the damage of the spill, and the corporate liability arising from it, seem minimal.

Such low-end estimates were conceived, in the words of Fast Company, to "greenwash" the scale of the spill's impact. And small wonder: BP stands to be fined between $1,100 and $4,300 per barrel of oil leaked under the Clean Water Act. That range hinges on the degree that the courts rule that BP's own negligence prompted the spill.

After seeing our chart in the top right corner of this post shortly when we initially published it, a reader -- New York-based writer Bradley Warshauer -- created a chart showing what a bar graph would look like using the U.S. government's estimate of how much oil BP spilled into the Gulf in 2010, versus the amount it says it spilled in 2006 and 2008. He was kind enough to pass it along so we could embed it below:

BP also devotes several other portions of the report to touting the company's response to the spill.

"From the beginning, BP worked to fight the spill and minimize its impact on the environment," one section of the report reads—in glowing language not unlike what surfaced in the PR copy that "BP reporters" produced for the in-house organ Planet BP last summer. "These efforts helped to reduce the amount of oil that reached the shore and environmentally sensitive marsh areas."

BP -- which Tuesday evening announced that it had lost a computer containing the personal information[see story below] of over 13,000 oil spill claimants -- is otherwise keeping mum, however, on just what the company believes might be a more accurate estimate of the quantity of oil, CO2 and methane it spilled into the Gulf environment. The oil giant's representatives did not immediately respond to The Lookout's requests for more information.

BP Lost Laptop Containing 13,000 Spill Claimants Info

March 29, 2011

AP - BP employee lost a laptop containing personal data belonging to thousands of residents who filed claims for compensation after the Gulf oil spill, a company spokesman said Tuesday.

BP spokesman Curtis Thomas said the oil giant on Monday mailed out letters to roughly 13,000 people whose data was stored on the computer, notifying them about the potential data security breach and offering to pay for their credit to be monitored. The company also reported the missing laptop to law enforcement, he said.

The laptop was password-protected, but the information was not encrypted, Thomas said.

The data included a spreadsheet of claimants' names, Social Security numbers, phone numbers and addresses. But Thomas said the company doesn't have any evidence that claimants' personal information has been misused.

"We're committed to the people of the Gulf Coast states affected by the Deepwater Horizon accident and spill, and we deeply regret that this occurred," he said.

The data belonged to individuals who filed claims with BP before the Gulf Coast Claims Facility took over the processing of claims in August. BP paid roughly $400 million in claims before the switch. As of Tuesday, the GCCF had paid roughly $3.6 billion to 172,539 claimants.

The employee lost the laptop on March 1 during "routine business travel," said Thomas, who declined to elaborate on the circumstances.

"If it was stolen, we think it was a crime of opportunity, but it was initially lost," Thomas said.

BP is offering to pay for claimants to have their credit monitored by Equifax, an Atlanta-based credit bureau.

Asked why nearly a month elapsed before BP notified residents about the missing laptop, Thomas said,

"We were doing our due diligence and investigating."

Matt O'Brien, part owner of Tiger Pass Seafood, a shrimp dock in Venice, La., said he had filed a claim with BP before the GCCF took over processing claims in August. A call from an AP reporter on Tuesday was the first he had heard that his personal information may have been among the data compromised.

"That's like it's par for the course for them," O'Brien said of BP. "They can't seem to do nothing right."

Beau Weber, a fishing guide in Lafitte, La., also had filed a claim with BP prior to Aug. 23, and he had even received several monthly payments from BP. He said he hadn't received a letter from BP about the missing laptop.

"It's terrible," he said of the breach. "I kinda work hard for the things I have. I wouldn't want somebody with a computer to be able to take it from me. It's very disturbing. It's like another gallon of gas thrown on the fire."